Showing posts with label Martin Callinan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Martin Callinan. Show all posts

Thursday, January 4, 2018

The Maurice McCabe Affair - Six Top Level Resignations To Date (and More to Come?)

Alan Shatter - Resigned May 2014
Frances Fitzgerald - Resigned Nov. 2017


To date the saga of whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe has resulted in the forced resignations of  six prominent individuals and has had a negative effect on the careers of  two successive Irish Prime Ministers - and on the current Minster for Justice Charlie Flanagan (whose two predecessors, pictured above, had to fall on their swords in disgrace). Meanwhile Sergeant McCabe has gone from success to success - "he who must not be criticised" - even though the O'Higgins Commission was less than supportive of his claim that five senior Gardai, ranging from his immediate superior to the Garda Commissioner, were corrupt.
   .
"It's a bit Irish" our former colonial masters used to say about some especially farcical situation. However they are in no position to laugh now. In recent years in the UK, two major investigations  - Operations Midland (London Metropolitan Police) and Conifer (Wiltshire Police) - were carried out into allegations of paedophilia, homicide and Satanic Ritual Abuse leveled at former Tory Prime Minister Ted Heath who died in 2005 i.e. a decade before the investigations began. In Ireland we still have some way to go  before we plumb those depths of insanity - but we are getting there!

To summarise the Irish saga, the casualties to date include: 

  • Two successive Ministers for Justice - Alan Shatter and Frances Fitzgerald.
  • Two successive Secretary-Generals of the Department of Justice - Brian Purcell and Noel Waters.
  • Two successive Garda (Police) Commissioners - Martin Callinan and Noirin O'Sullivan.
Moreover the affair contributed to the controversies surrounding the retirement of  former Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Enda Kenny in June 2017, while his successor Leo Varadkar has been weakened by the resignation of deputy PM Frances Fitzgerald.

[ I have photos only of Shatter and Fitzgerald above. Both may well be  innocent in the present case, but they previously whipped up the media mob against their own "reactionary" enemies. (See links on their names). Now they have fallen victim not to the "reactionaries", but to their former media friends who have turned Nihilist, and now hate everyone in power! ]

The most dangerous and long-lasting consequence of this fake scandal is likely to be on the morale of An Garda Siochana (Irish police). However the immediate consequence will be the difficulty in getting a credible candidate to take on the post of Secretary- General of the Department of Justice. Noel Waters reluctantly took over from Brian Purcell in 2014 as Acting Secretary General on the understanding that he would pass on the poisoned chalice to a newly appointed SG after a few weeks. However no credible candidate applied for the job and Noel Waters was appointed on a permanent basis in October 2016. Now he has gone too!


Enough of shameful tokenism, dismantling 'Independent Republic' must be next step

The above is the headline over an article in the Irish Independent on 29 November 2017 by Ivan Yates, a businessman and broadcaster who is also a former Fine Gael politician who was once a Minister (of Agriculture). The 'Independent Republic' he refers to is the Department of Justice and his article demonstrates the danger to the institutions of the State posed by people who treat a whistleblower with uncritical adulation. ("Shameful tokenism" is supposed to describe the multiple resignations and general hysteria to date.) Yates also provides a useful summary of how this scandal developed:

The entire tenure of Frances Fitzgerald as justice minister covered May 8, 2014 to June 14, 2017.To ascertain the first she knew of Garda management's campaign of retaliation against Sergeant Maurice McCabe was in June 2016, could never be sustained. .....Appointing and constantly defending Noirin O'Sullivan as Garda commissioner and Noel Waters as secretary general at Justice meant she favoured and protected the status quo rather than seeking radical reform. 

The first wave of the toxic fallout for the failed McCabe character assasination ended the careers of former justice minister Alan Shatter, Garda commissioner Martin Callinan and secretary general of the Department of Justice Brian Purcell. The second wave toppled Taoisceach Enda Kenny, Ms O Sullivan, Mr. Waters and Ms. Fitzgerald. But more need to go. Management structures at An Garda Siochana in the Phoenix Park and Department of Justice in St. Stephens Green need to be deconstructed. ........

The 'Independent Republic' of the Department of Justice needs to be dismantled. It hasn't so much regulated the Department of Justice as acted as its downtown office. It has used the cloak of 'state security' to operate a secretive culture unanswerable to the elected government. It is dysfunctionable in passing communications to ministers in time, proving this week that it always covers its own backside. 

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan risks becoming its latest victim by failing to assert his ministerial authority.......

It's a nihilistic view and unsurprisingly Ivan Yates praises the media and TDs Mick Wallace and Clare Daly for voicing  the same criticisms over the years. I see that Yates gave an interview to Eolas magazine recently in which he gave this interesting overview of his career to date:
http://www.eolasmagazine.ie/live-and-let-live-ivan-yates/
“It’s funny,” laughs Yates. “When I went into politics a lot of Protestants said: ‘Tut Tut, politics is the lowest form of animal life and you shouldn’t be doing it.’ And when I was getting out of politics into bookmaking the politicians said: ‘What are you doing? Bookmaking is the lowest form of animal life!’ So I kept going down-hill and ending up in the media is the gutter altogether.”

Well that's honest anyway - and accurate as well!


Garda Controversies:The Personnel and Casualties to Date

 Maurice McCabe: Actually more an instigator than a casualty. Whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe began raising his questions about alleged garda malpractise more than a decade ago. The ongoing Disclosures Tribunal chaired by Mr. Justice Peter Charleton is investigating if he was subjected to a "smear campaign" by the gardai he was accusing of corruption. (Does this "campaign" amount to anything more than gardai defending themselves against allegations that the O'Higgins Commission found were false?)

Martin Callinan: The former Garda commissioner resigned in March 2014 with the force embroiled in two controversies - namely the whistleblower issue and concern over the practise of recording phone calls at Garda stations. (Giving evidence before the Public Accounts Committee in January 2014, Martin Callinan had described the actions of  two Garda whistleblowers John Wilson and Maurice McCabe as "disgusting".)

Alan Shatter: The ex-Fine Gael TD quit as Justice Minister in May 2014 after his handling of the whistleblower claims was challanged in the Guerin report. The O'Higgins Commission subsequently found that Mr Shatter had handled the concerns appropriately. The Report of the Commission was published in May 2016 - but Shatter had also lost his Dail seat in the General Election of February 2016.

Brian Purcell: Former Department of Justice Secretary General Brian Purcell stood aside in July 2014 after then Justice minister Frances Fitzgerald published theToland Report on the Department, which identified a "closed, secretive and silo-driven culture" there. 

Enda Kenny: Mr Kenny's departure as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) in June 2017 is said to have been  accelerated over his handling of revelations the previous February, that false allegations of child abuse were made against Sergeant Maurice McCabe. (A gross blunder by a social worker had led her to cut and paste details from a diferent case, onto a file dealing with Sergeant McCabe!) 

Noirin O'Sullivan: Ms. O'Sullivan quit as Garda commissioner in September 2017. She said that the "unending cycle" of investigations and inquiries into Garda controversies was making it difficult to "implement the  deep ... reform necessary to modernise" the Garda. She was the second garda commissioner to resign over the Maurice McCabe affair.

Noel Waters: Mr.Waters served as acting secretary general of Department of Justice after Mr. Purcell's departure. He was appointed on a permanent basis in October 2016. He had planned to retire in February 2018 but instead resigned on 28 November 2017 while issuing a statement that those working in Justice had been "subjected to a barrage of unwarranted criticism". He was the second Secretary general of Justice to resign over the McCabe affair.

Frances Fitzgerald: Frances Fitzgerald resigned as Tanaiste (Deputy Prime Minister) and Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation on 28 November 2017. She had been Minister for Justice until June 2017 and thus became the second former Minister for Justice to resign over the whistleblower "scandal". 

Fitzgerald was a close ally of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar but Fianna Fail had threatened to withdraw from their co-operation agreement with the Government and thus cause an election, if Fitzgerald did not resign. Varadkar is therefore the second Taoiseach to be adversely  affected by this "scandal" based on the allegations of Sergeant McCabe.

Charlie Flanagan: Charlie Flanagan is our current Minister for Justice. As indicated in previous posts and especially this one, he survives because he is prepared to throw his own civil servants under the bus in order to save himself. To do him justice (no pun intended), the almost simultaneous resignations of  Noel Waters and Frances Fitzgerald also took pressure off him and served to sate the media witch-hunters. For the time being, no one wants to force a third Minister for Justice to fall on his sword!


Conclusion:


It is notable that all of the politicians who have been adversely affected by this fake "scandal" have themselves  slandered other people or joined in media witch-hunts against their ideological opponents. 

Alan Shatter: In 2009 Shatter demanded - and got - a high level Garda investigation into allegations that the Catholic Church had been involved in the unsolved murder of  a 10 year old girl Bernadette Connolly, four decades previously in 1970. A year later he was told by the then Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern (Fianna Fail) that no evidence of such collusion had been found. A few months after that, Fianna Fail were out of power and in March 2011, Shatter himself became Minister for Justice in the new Fine Gael government. There was not a word from him subsequently about Bernadette Connolly, so we can assume that he did not suspect that Fianna Fail had colluded with the Gardai investigators to protect the Church! However Shatter further aggravated an existing climate of public hysteria - and fell victim to it himself three years later.  

Enda Kenny. On 20 July 2011 the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny condemned the Vatican for its allege role in a "scandal" relating to the Dioces of Cloyne in Co. Cork.  He stated that the Church's alleged role in obstructing the Cloyne investigation into child abuse was a serious infringement upon the sovereignty of Ireland and that the scandal revealed "the dysfunction, disconnection and elitism that dominates the culture of the Vatican to this day" He added that "the historic relationship between church and state in Ireland could not be the same again".

On 3 September 2011, the Holy See issued its response to Mr Kenny's speech noting that "the accusation that the Holy See attempted to frustrate an Inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago", which Mr Kenny made no attempt to substantiate, is unfounded. Indeed, when asked, a Government spokesperson clarified that Mr. Kenny was not referring to any specific incident. [My emphasis].  The response added that "Those Reports [...] contain no evidence to suggest that the Holy See meddled in the internal affairs of the Irish State or, for that matter, was involved in the day-to-day management of Irish dioceses or religious congregations with respect to sexual abuse issues."

[NOTE: The reckless invocation of a non-existent grievance is a feature of  anti-clericalism in Ireland and I have written about an extreme example here. Our anti-clerics know that they will not be required to justify their allegations, so they feel free to make absurd claims!]

Leo Varadkar and Frances Fitzgerald supported the witch-hunt against journalist Kevin Myers in July/August 2017. Leo Varadkar claimed that the article written by Myers  "is misogynistic and anti-Semitic" and approved of the Sunday Times action in firing him. Frances Fitzgerald added that "there’s an onus on everyone, including the media obviously, to make sure that articles like that do not appear". Few journalists objected to our Prime Minister and Deputy PM endorsing political censorship nor did they pose any awkward questions to our great leaders when the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland declared that Kevin Myers is not an anti-Semite. However Varadkar and Fitzgerald's endorsement of the witch-hunt against Myers did not do them any good later when they themselves were targeted by the same media wolves!

Our current Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan was just an ordinary TD (Member of Parliament) in July 2009 when he made an obscene allegation against Nora Wall (formally Sister Dominic of the Sisters of Mercy). The allegation - that she had supplied children to paedophile priests - was one for which she had received an apology and damages from the Sunday World in 2002. Deputy Flanagan of course knew that he could not be sued for anything he said in the Dail (Parliament). I quote from his speech:
"There is more to this than meets the eye in respect of these social events. It has been suggested that there were frequent visits to the Cappoquin home by some clergy from Mount Melleray Abbey. Access to children may have been a key motivation for these visits. One must bear in mind that Mount Melleray was selected by the notorious paedophile, Fr. Brendan Smith, as a holiday destination or as a haven to which to escape when he was on the run from the authorities in Northern Ireland. This issue must be revisited" [My emphasis]

"This issue must be revisited". Like Alan Shatter before him, Charlie Flanagan is now Justice Minister. Has he revisited the issue? If he has failed to do so - as Shatter failed to follow up on his allegations regarding the murder of Bernadette Connolly - why has this happened? Does the Catholic Church still exercise secret power in Department of Justice?   Are senior civil servants members of Opus Dei or the Knights of Columbanus?  I think that Minister Flanagan has a duty to enlighten us!

NOTE dated 11 January 2018
In addition to slandering Nora Wall (and the Cistercian monks of Mount Melleray) in 2009, I had forgotten that  Charlie Flanagan also defamed a senior civil servant in the  Department of Health. This man had carried out an inspection of the Sister of Mercy children's home in Cappoquin which was managed by Nora Wall and given it a favourable report. In the insane  imaginings of the then Fine Gael Spokesman for Justice (now Minister), that meant the official must have been complicit in child abuse and a member of a Paedophile Ring! See my Comment below dated 10 January.

Charlie Flanagan is now trying to save his political skin by throwing his own civil servants under the bus in relation to the Maurice McCabe "scandal". Clearly this is NOT the first time he targeted civil servants in relation to an invented and hysterical "scandal".



Sunday, December 3, 2017

The Sergeant and The Secretary-General: Can We Trust Our Civil Servants?

Noel Waters - former Secretary General Dept of Justice and Equality


Sergeant Maurice McCabe - Whistle-blower Extraordinaire

Introduction and Summary

Since 2014 the Garda Whistleblower Scandal - mainly centering on Sergeant Maurice McCabe - has resulted in the resignation of two Ministers/former Ministers of Justice (Alan Shatter in May 2014 and Frances Fitzgerald now on 28 November ), two Garda Commissioners (Martin Callinan in March 2014 and Noirin O'Sullivan in September 2017), two Secretary-Generals of the Department of Justice and Equality (Brian Purcell in July 2014 and now Noel Waters on 28 November). The reputation of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar has been weakened as has that of the current Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan. Charlie Flanagan has been forced to apologise in the Irish Parliament to one of his chief critics Alan Kelly TD. and  retains his position largely because nobody wants an election before Christmas. (Also the opposition have already got their pound of flesh following the recent resignations of Frances Fitzgerald and Noel Waters!) 

The effect of the allegations made by Maurice McCabe has been extra-ordinary - not least because the report of the O'Higgins Commission published in May 2016 found that many of his dramatic allegations were false - a point I covered in my recent article "Sergeant Maurice McCabe and 'Corrupt' Garda Officers. For example

(i) The report cleared the former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan of an allegation of corruption made by Sgt McCabe regarding the alleged placement of a senior officer on a promotion list. The allegation had no foundation
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(ii) Complaints of corruption made by Sgt McCabe against Assistant Commissioner Derek Byrne, Chief Superintendent Colm Rooney and Superintendent Michael Clancy were all found to be hurtful and unfounded. Sergeant McCabe also made allegations against his immediate superior Inspector Noel Cunningham– later promoted to superintendent. These were also dismissed and categorised as “unjustified criticism".

(iii) Claims of corruption in investigations. The report found no evidence of garda criminality or corruption, but found junior gardaĆ­ were allowed investigate cases without sufficient supervision from more senior officers..............

MY QUERY:How is it possible for anyone to mistakenly accuse FIVE superior officers - and some colleagues - of corruption?


The Current Position:

In February 2017 the then Minister for Justice, Frances Fitzgerald set up a "Tribunal of Inquiry into Protected Disclosures", sole member Mr Justice Peter Charleton, Judge of the Supreme Court. This is to investigate whether former Garda Commissioners Callinan or O'Sullivan or other senior Gardai, contacted the media or otherwise tried to discredit whistleblowers who made disclosures of wrongdoing - mainly Sergeant Maurice McCabe but also Garda Keith Harrison. Also to investigate if senior Gardai attempted to use false allegations of sexual abuse to discredit Sergeant McCabe or Garda Harrison.

On 30 November Mr Justice Charleton published an Interim Report which dismissed the allegations made by Garda Keith Harrison in the  strongest terms. An article in TheJournal.ie is headed
 'This is utter nonsense': How Justice Charleton eviscerated Garda Keith Harrison's claims 
with subheading
"Unequivocally, confidently, and often brutally, Charleton has dismissed the claims made by Harrison"

On 2 December the Irish Independent carried a short article headed "The TDs Who Backed Keith Harrison" and named them as Labour TD Alan Kelly, left-wing Independents Clare Daly and Mick Wallace and Sinn Fein TD Pearse Doherty. All have also supported Sergeant Maurice McCabe. (For example see article in the Irish Times on 20 February 2017 Mick Wallace: To change An Garda, get rid of its hierarchy ).


The Current Problem - Desperate Politicians Targeting Civil Servants

Politicians, members of An Garda Siochana and senior civil servants are being targeted by an out-of-control media bent on whipping up hysteria and bringing down any prominent citizen. However the politicians are not just victims of hysteria. Several of those caught up in the current witch-hunt are left-wing and 'liberal' types who were very happy to use the media against their own perceived enemies. Now they find to their horror that they themselves have become prey for the monster they helped to feed! The reaction of Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is to blame their civil servants - who are forbidden by law to engage in politics and therefore have great difficulty in defending themselves. 

[The targets of these previous witch-hunts have been either Catholic clergy and religious or 'reactionary' journalists. However the influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland today is less than zero and the number of Irish journalists with viewpoints opposed to the 'liberal' consensus is also very small. One response  of 'liberals' is to turn on each other but for politicians, it is also tempting to blame their civil servants!]

Alan Shatter claimed in 2009 that the Catholic Church was implicated in the murder of a 10 year old girl in 1970. He demanded - and got - a high level Garda inquiry lasting a year,  into his false allegation. 

Charlie Flanagan slandered Nora Wall in the Dail (Irish Parliament) also in 2009 - repeating an allegation in respect of which she had received libel damages from the Sunday World in 2002. 

Leo Varadkar and Frances Fitzgerald supported the witch-hunt against journalist Kevin Myers a few months ago - and approved of the fact that he had been fired by the Sunday Times. 

Alan Shatter's political career has since  been terminated - and that of the others adversely affected - by the type of media hysteria that they themselves had endorsed when it suited them to do so. Now the politician-survivors want to present the media mob with other targets!


Resignation of Secretary General Noel Waters on 28 November

When the previous Secretary General of Dept of Justice Brian Purcell stepped aside in July 2014, following criticism of his Department in the 'Toland Report', he hinted that he did not agree with the findings of that Report. His reluctant successor Noel Waters went  a lot further when he told Minster Charlie Flanagan of his decision to resign. An article in the Irish Independent by Shane Phelan on 29 November is headed Departing Justice Boss Makes an Unprecedented Attack on Taoiseach

It is indeed unprecedented for a senior civil servant to make an attack on politicians but this is this is what Noel Waters has done in defense of his own staff in the Department of Justice. 

The departing secretary general of the Department of Justice fired a parting shot at TDs and the media as he retired yesterday with immediate effect. Noel Waters defiant email to colleagues notably came within hours of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar making a speech in which he described the department as "dysfunctional". Mr Waters ...claimed that much of the criticism voiced in the Dail and the press had been "unwarranted" and that he expected the department to be vindicated by an external inquiry......His decision came after much criticism of the department's failure to disclose emails to the Charleton Tribunal when it sought information earlier this year.

Mr Varadkar announce he was ordering an external inquiry into why important emails "were not found and therefore not sent on" to the tribunal. This inquiry will report before Christmas. If the emails were deliberately withheld from the tribunal, something the department denies, it would amount to a criminal offence. The emails revealed Ms Fitzgerald had been told of the "aggressive stance" then Garda Commissioner Noirin O'Sullivan's legal team was taking against Sergeant Maurice McCabe at the O'Higgins Commission.

Mr. Varadkar also said the Government was accelerating reforms already in train, and was planning "radical action to restore public confidence in the Department of Justice".

But in his letter to colleagues, Mr Waters claimed the department had been to "a barrage of unwarranted criticism in recent days and most particularly today. I want to assure you that in so far as is humanly possible, this department has sought at all times to act appropriately, upholding the law and the institutions of the State" he said. "Many of the claims about how the Department has acted that have been made in the media and the Dail are not true, and I am confident that the processes that the Taoiseach has announced will show that to be the case".

While the above headline highlights the role of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, the  article on top of the same page  is headed  'I Missed Significance of Email at Centre of Row,' Admits Flanagan and features our current Justice Minister disclaiming personal responsibility and blaming his own officials. I suspect that  is the more likely cause of Noel Waters resignation!

Extracts from the latter article by 'Group Political Editor' Kevin Doyle:
Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan admitted that he "missed the significance" of the email at the centre of the controversy that brought the Government to the The under-fire minister told the Dail last night [28 November] that he was "shocked and frankly horrified" that documents in the possession of the Department of Justice had not been handed over to the Charleton tribunal. He poured blame on officials in his department saying it was "a major challenge at every step to obtain complete information in a timely manner, indeed on a few occasions recently, information has been provided to me, to the Taoiseach, and then to this House, which has proven subsequently to be inaccurate. ". .....

Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin told the Dail the current row "must be the nail in the coffin of the secrecy and silos in the Department of Justice. Yes there must be a fundamental change in the culture of that Department, but Government must also take responsibility and take legitimate questioning by the Opposition, not as partisan grandstanding all the time.. Over the past three weeks the Government has taken too dismissive an attitude to Opposition members who raised very important and profound questions," he said.

As part of the reforms being planned for Justice, TDs are to be given an opportunity to sit down face to face with the senior officials to ask questions........

MY COMMENT: 
There is a discussion on the politics.ie website regarding the topic  "Charlie Flanagan Next" and at one point I tried to summarise as follows:
The basic issue is fairly straightforward. Sergeant Maurice McCabe claimed that FIVE of his superiors were corrupt - all the way from the Inspector who was his immediate boss right up to Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan. These claims were found by the O'Higgins Commission to be false and it was inevitable that the Gardai were going to contest them. But at the same time politicians, like the then Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald, felt obliged to treat Sergeant McCabe as a paragon of virtue and truth. There was an obvious contradiction there. The way to avoid this in future is for claims by Whiste-blowers to be treated in the same way as any other allegations of wrong-doing. This means they are NOT to be automatically accepted OR rejected from the word go!

The politicians - including Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Leo Varadkar and current Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan - have tried to iron out the contradiction and evade responsibility by accusing their civil servants of failing to supply them with accurate information. One result of their behaviour is that it will be very difficult to find anyone of suitable caliber to replace Noel Waters as Secretary General of the Department of Justice. His predecessor Brian Purcell was obliged to step aside in similar dubious circumstances in 2014. Noel Waters was originally supposed to fill the position on  a temporary basis for a few weeks until a new Secretary General was appointed but  no suitable candidate emerged to accept the poisoned chalice. So who on earth is going to accept it now?


Sunday, November 26, 2017

Sergeant Maurice McCabe and "Corrupt" Garda Officers


Sergeant Maurice McCabe - Whistle-blower Extraordinaire

Introduction and Background

[As there are numerous actors in this drama I have highlighted in red those who have already resigned and in pink those who may be forced out in the near future]

According to the Wikipedia article on Garda Whistleblower Scandal
"In 2014, material revealed by two Garda SĆ­ochĆ”na (Irish police) whistleblowers, Maurice McCabe and John Wilson, as well as the handling of the material and of the whistleblowers, led directly to the resignation of Ireland's then Minister for Justice and Equality, Alan Shatter. It was also part of the background leading up to the resignation of the Garda Commissioner, Martin Callinan. It was also part of the reason for the retirement of his successor [as Garda Commissioner] NĆ³irĆ­n O'Sullivan."

This summary fails to mention the fact that the Secretary General of the Department of Justice Brian Purcell was also forced to resign in 2014 after the then Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar said his Department was "not fit for purpose" and the new Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald failed to support him. Leo Varadkar and Frances Fitzgerald are now respectively Taoiseach (Prime Minster) and Tanaiste (Deputy PM). The former is facing a demand from the opposition that he sack the latter - or else- for her alleged failure to deal with an alleged campaign of intimidation by Garda officers against Maurice McCabe. 

Meanwhile the present Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan has accused Labour Deputy Alan Kelly of carrying out a "smear campaign" against himself. This allegation is rich considering Flanagan's own previous behaviour - as detailed in this blog. However there is little doubt that IF Leo Varadkar is forced to drop Fitzgerald, then Charlie Flanagan will become the next target for political liquidation!

It should be noted that in 2009 the then TD Charlie Flanagan slandered Nora Wall in a speech to Dail Eireann (Irish Parliament). Similarly, prior to becoming Minister for Justice Alan Shatter had thrown his weight behind an allegation that the Catholic Church was implicated in the murder of a 10 year old girl in 1970. AND only a few months ago, both Leo Varadkar and Frances Fitzgerald had placed themselves at the head of the mob that slandered journalist Kevin Myers by describing him as a Anti-Semite and a Misogynist!  

As the old saying goes - Curses are like chickens: they always come home to roost!


The Findings of the O'Higgins Report

A commission of investigation was established in February 2015 to investigate and report on certain matters relative to the Cavan/Monaghan Division of the Garda SĆ­ochĆ”na (Irish police). Mr Justice Kevin O’Higgins was the Commission’s sole member. The Commission arose from the report of May 2014 from Mr Sean Guerin, SC, to the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) concerning allegations made by Sergeant Maurice McCabe. The then Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald officially published the report on 11 May 2016.

A detailed account of the O'Higgins Report is contained in an article by RTE crime correspondent Paul Reynolds  dated 9 May 2016 headed "Report: McCabe Dedicated But Prone to Exaggeration". In my opinion that is a very charitable description of Sergeant McCabe!

In Brief:


(i) The report cleared the former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan of an allegation of corruption made by Sgt McCabe regarding the alleged placement of a senior officer on a promotion list. The allegation had no foundation

.
(ii) Complaints of corruption made by Sgt McCabe against Assistant Commissioner Derek Byrne, Chief Superintendent Colm Rooney and Superintendent Michael Clancy were all found to be hurtful and unfounded. Sergeant McCabe also made allegations against his immediate superior Inspector Noel Cunningham– later promoted to superintendent. These were also dismissed and categorised as “unjustified criticism".


(iii) Claims of corruption in investigations The report found no evidence of garda criminality or corruption, but found junior gardaĆ­ were allowed investigate cases without sufficient supervision from more senior officers.


(iv) The former justice minister Alan Shatter was also completely vindicated in the report. The commission of investigation found that Mr Shatter, who was the subject of an unprecedented, hate-filled campaign, did indeed take Sergeant McCabe's allegations "very seriously" and his actions on the matter were "entirely reasonable and appropriate". (Note: It was actually the publication of the report by Sean Guerin SC in May 2014 that caused the resignation of Alan Shatter - not testimony by Sergeant McCabe.)


MY QUERY:How is it possible for anyone to mistakenly accuse FIVE superior officers - and some colleagues - of corruption?


There is no need for conspiracy theories in relation to this 'scandal', no need to imagine senior Garda management setting up a smear campaign against Sergeant McCabe. Apply 'Ockham's Razor'to the problem; this is the explanatory principle developed by the Franciscan philosopher William of Ockhan several centuries ago i.e. 'among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected'. (Or 'if there are two alternative explanations, the simpler one is most likely to be true'.) 


Sergeant McCabe made himself extremely unpopular with his superiors and his Garda colleagues by falsely accusing them of corruption. Justice O'Higgins assumed that he was mistaken rather than malicious but in practice this makes little difference to the people affected by his false allegations. But why should they - or any other Gardai, or the Minister for Justice - engage in a secret conspiracy to damage Maurice McCabe's reputation when he did it all by himself?


Article by former TD and MEP Gay Mitchell in Irish Independent on 27 November

The article is called "Varadkar has golden opportunity to show leadership mettle and stand up to Sinn Fein"

"To this day I do not know why Alan Shatter, a conscientious and able justice minister was pushed from office. Two Garda commissioners have also departed. We have now lost to premature retirement the secretary general of the Department of Justice. Ms Fitzgerald's "offence" seems to be that she saw an email about which she was required by law to not intervene, even if it had registered with her. She obeyed the law."

Gay Mitchell believes that Sinn Fein want another official decapitated and that Fianna Fail feels obliged to assist for fear of missing out on the publicity. He concludes correctly that "the tail is wagging the dog". However I don't think that this analysis goes deep enough. 

Basically the problem does not lie with Sinn Fein or Fianna Fail or with any politician. The problem is that nobody is questioning the bona fides of Sergeant Maurice McCabe - certainly not the media and consequently not politicians or the public either. It's not a question of citizens thinking - well Sergeant McCabe has made some serious mistakes but in general I support him. People seem to be  unaware of the most basic facts about this fake scandal - because the media have arranged it that way. The public seem to view Maurice McCabe as a lone hero who is fearlessly defying the might of vicious and powerful politicians. The opposite might be closer to the truth!