Force endures its darkest hour, with one light shining
Just one outstanding problem is unearthed again and again: McCabe. He is the problem. Without him, there would be no issues arising. Everybody would just turn the other way and get on with the job.
The chain of events set out by Seán Guerin is shocking. He goes through 12 separate matters highlighted by McCabe — most of them involving criminal cases which were not properly investigated, with scant regard for the victims.
Victims of serious assault and possible sexual assault were ignored. Others were targeted for not going away quietly when their complaints were mishandled. Procedures and rules were entirely ignored. Young probationary gardaĂ were put in charge of investigations with practically no supervision.
In all bar one of the criminal cases reviewed by Guerin, he concludes: “In my opinion, these matters warrant further inquiry in an appropriate forum in the public interest.”
The second phase of this theme is the internal investigations conducted into McCabe’s complaints about the original investigations.
The cases of which McCabe complained were investigated within the force, by a team headed up by Derek Byrne, the assistant commissioner.
What do you get when gardaĂ investigate the conduct of gardaĂ? Not much to write home about, according to Guerin.
“Ultimately, it appears that conclusions were arrived at as a result of the investigative process without there ever having been a thorough and searching testing of the evidence,” he states.
He goes on to say that, in any internal investigation, there appears to be “if not an instinctive, at least a routine preference for the evidence of the senior officers in respect of whom complaints had been made”. In other words, if a junior member complains about the senior member, the latter’s version is instinctively preferred, irrespective of the evidence.
The process of internal Garda investigations come across in this report as a box-ticking exercise designed to produce a particular outcome rather than access the truth.
This is not the first time in recent years that this problem has arisen. The internal O’Mahoney garda report found little evidence of senior officers abusing the penalty points system. Only when the matter was examined by the Comptroller & Auditor General and the Garda Inspectorate did the true picture emerge.
What of the ultimate oversight authority — the Department of Justice? Surely these people could see the wood from the trees when a highly regarded sergeant makes numerous attempts to have his concerns addressed, once he had lost faith in that happening within the force?
Repeatedly, the justice department, and the minister, merely referred the issue back to the commissioner, subjecting McCabe to a Kafkaesque nightmare in which he was effectively a prisoner of the force.
“I am of the opinion that there is cause for concern as to the adequacy of the investigation of the complaints made by Sergeant McCabe to the Minister for Justice and Equality and a sufficient basis for concern as to whether all appropriate steps were taken by the Minister for Justice and Equality to investigate and address specific complaints.”
How do the force deal with a problem like McCabe?
Repeatedly, there were attempts to bury him. In two instances, there were attempts to put him in the frame for failings in the case of Mary Lynch, the Kells-based taxi driver who was viciously assaulted by a man who went on to murder another woman.
Then there was an attempt to blame him for the loss of a computer seized from a priest who was subsequently convicted of child pornography and abuse.
Guerin leaves nobody in doubt as to how McCabe emerges from the whole saga. He references three of McCabe’s superior officers who spoke of his character, ability, and work ethic in glowing terms.
“No complex organisation can expect to succeed in its task if it cannot find the means of heeding the voice of a member whose immediate supervisors hold him in the high regard which Sergeant McCabe was held. Ultimately, An Garda Siochána does not seem to have been able to do that. Nor does the Minister for Justice and Equality, despite having an independent supervisory and investigative function with statutory powers.”
The Garda ombudsman doesn’t emerge unscathed either. However, it should be pointed out that, in some of the cases examined, GSOC conducted its inquiries through seconded senior gardaĂ, who were still serving. In this regard, there is a suspicion that some investigations might have taken on the character of internal inquiries, and have suffered from the same shortcomings highlighted in that model of inquiry.
Yesterday’s report was a dark hour for An Garda SĂochána. The culture of dealing with problems within the force has been shown to be entirely corrupt. Parallels have been drawn with the wholesale corruption exposed in Donegal over a decade ago. In ways, this is much worse. In Donegal, a few errant officers with little regard for either the force or the public wreaked havoc. Here, the failings went all the way to Garda HQ, into the Department of Justice, and right up to the minister.
Yet the darkest hour may precede the dawn. If proper reform takes place, if the errant culture can be addressed, the good intentions and work of so many individual gardaĂ can receive proper commendation. Already, the proposed new Garda authority will take politics out of policing, and new powers granted to GSOC can help provide robust oversight. It remains to be seen if the political will is there to follow through.
Seán Guerin has done the State some service, demonstrating that, even in our fractured democracy, there are still avenues where the truth will out.
Sgt Maurice McCabe has done an even greater service. He has received vindication, but in the fullness of time, his contribution to policing in this country will have to be properly recognised.
Report author, barrister Seán Guerin, was known to Fine Gael from the days of the Flood/Mahon Tribunal, when he was part of the legal team representing the party.
He was very much a junior member of the team when he joined it in the 1990s, but in more recent years he headed up related proceedings regarding applications for costs by members of the party questioned by the inquiry.
However, while that might have put him on Enda Kenny’s radar, he will have been a leading candidate for the job of probing the handling of the whistleblower dossier because of his extensive work in criminal law.
He has worked on both the prosecution and defence sides, giving him a strong insight into the workings of the gardaĂ and legal profession.
Over the last decade in particular, he has worked on some of the most serious cases before the criminal courts — dealing with murder, rape, tiger kidnappings, and robbery, as well as drugs, fraud, and firearms offences.
In 2006, he represented the DPP in the appeal on leniency grounds against the sentence handed down to Wayne O’Donoghue for the manslaughter of Cork schoolboy Robert Holohan.
More recently, he has been on the prosecution team in the murder trials of defendants accused of the shooting dead in Limerick of Shane Geoghegan and Roy Collins, and he is also involved in the Elaine O’Hara murder case, which will be coming before the courts early next year.
It probably did no harm to Mr Guerin’s reputation, either, that he has prosecuted several gardaà before the courts on criminal charges, and has also acted for the Law Society in misconduct proceedings against solicitors.
A native of Co Wexford, he is the son of a retired Garda sergeant.
He is in his 40s and was called to the bar as a junior counsel in 1997, progressing to the inner bar as senior counsel last year.
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