'Recovered Memory' in Ireland - and Allegations of Child Abuse

Michael O'Brien, ex-Mayor of Clonmel and head of Victim's Group 'Right To Peace' Confronts Fianna Fail Minister Noel Dempsey on RTE,  25 May 2009

Background

[ Unlike Satanic Ritual Abuse, "Recovered Memory" has played a significant role in allegations of child abuse in Ireland (although less so than in the UK and the USA, I believe). This article is mainly about the claims of Michael O'Brien, founder of the Victims' group "Right to Peace" but I also refer to actor Gabriel Byrne and his allegations against the Christian Brothers AND the late Patrick Galvin author of the book  "Song for a Raggy Boy" and later screen-writer for the FILM of the same name that told a rather different story! ]

Regarding Michael O'Brien, the above TV confrontation took place shortly after the publication in May 2009 of the Report of the 'Commission To Inquire into Child Abuse' (the 'Ryan Commission'). According to an Irish Times article on 27 May "Ex-Mayor Tells of Abuse by Order"  

Michael O’Brien, from Clonmel, Co Tipperary, told [Transport Minister] Mr Dempsey during RTÉ’s Questions and Answers that the Constitution should be changed to freeze the funds of the religious orders.

Mr O’Brien was a resident of St Joseph’s Industrial School in Clonmel, which was run by the Rosminian order, during the 1940s and he said he was sexually and physically abused there. He said that he and seven other members of his family were removed from their house before being sent to industrial schools. He was reunited with his brother on the Late Late Show some 40 years later. Mr O’Brien said he had voted for Fianna Fáil since he was 18, but that the party’s behaviour around the issue of child abuse was turning him away from it. He served as a councillor for the party in Tipperary and was elected mayor of Clonmel in 1993. 

In September 2004, repeated interruptions from Mr O’Brien and other past residents of St Joseph’s resulted in a hearing of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse being adjourned twice.....

My Reply re Allegations by Michael O'Brien

This video was shared during a discussion that followed a December 2015 article by Luke Gittos, Law Editor of the Spiked-OnLine website; he called the article  "No Justice in a Year of Moral Crusades" with subheading "But there are signs of a growing public scepticism about the child-abuse panic".

The video was posted by  "holliegreig justice" and I responded as follows:

Kilbarry1 [Rory Connor]: reply to  holliegreig justice
This is Michael O'Brien former mayor of Clonmel, stating on Irish national television in May 2009 that he was "raped, buggered and beaten" by priests of the Rosminian Order when he was resident of an industrial school. (RTE "Questions and Answers" programme) There is a complete transcript of his statement in the Irish Times here

What "holliegrieg justice" omits to tell us is that there was a very curious follow up to Mr O'Brien's public outburst - and it came from the leader of ANOTHER "Child Abuse Survivors" group, Christine Buckley.

An article in The Sunday Tribune a year later, (16 May 2010) is headed "Survivors at Loggerheads Over Denial of Sex Abuse" with subheading "Christine Buckley Questions Michael O'Brien's Radio Interview from 10 years ago"

Here is an extract:
Survivors of sexual abuse in religious-run residential institutions are embroiled in an increasingly bitter row over how some €680m in compensation from religious orders identified in the Ryan report should be shared out, the Sunday Tribune has learned.

The dispute took a dramatic twist this weekend when the Aislinn Centre's Christine Buckley criticised a decade-old radio interview with the former mayor of Clonmel, Michael O'Brien, where he claimed NOT [my emphasis] to have been sexually abused while he was incarcerated in St Joseph's industrial school, Ferryhouse.

This directly contradicts a highly-charged intervention on RTE's Questions and Answers programme in May of last year, where O'Brien detailed the extent of abuse he suffered, prompting widespread public sympathy and anger.

During the 1999 interview on a local radio station, O'Brien expresses sympathy for victims of sexual abuse who suffered at the hands of the notorious Rosminian abuser at Ferryhouse, Brother Sean Barry. He goes on to say: "But I must say, and I have to say it here and now, because I had to meet my family when this came out. And say it never happened to me, I never seen it happening, I never heard of it happening in my seven years in Ferryhouse. I never seen or heard of it."

Although O'Brien acknowledges in the interview that he was subjected to physical abuse and deprivation at Ferryhouse, he also pays tribute to the Rosminians and says that this was the state's fault, not Ferryhouse.

"We were left there to those brothers and those priests to become our parents, and look after us. And as far as I'm concerned, 99.9% of them done a good job... out of every group, no matter what organisation you're in, you'll find bad eggs, Ferryhouse is my home. And I will defend it to the end as long as I live, because I was reared by them." .....

Ms Buckley (who died in 2014) once made some truly extraordinary claims about her own treatment by the Sisters of Mercy - AND she supported claims that a nun had murdered a baby by burning holes in its legs with a red hot poker. Accordingly she cannot be accused of bias in favour of the Catholic Church. However the various leaders of "Victims" groups had fallen out about how vast sums of "compensation" should be shared - and for THAT reason, they were prepared to criticise each other.

holliegreig justice: reply to  Kilbarry1 
if you think he made that up clearly you need help.I mean its not like there are vested intrests to make it look like he made it up

Kilbarry1: reply to holliegreig justice 
The "vested interests" include Christine Buckley, an icon of the child abuse lobby in Ireland, recipient of the European Volunteer of the Year Award in 2009 and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Trinity College in 2012. (Presiding at the latter ceremony, was former President of Ireland Mary Robinson, in her capacity as Chancellor of the University).

If Mr. O'Brien didn't "make it up" in 2009, he must have done so 10 years earlier, in the radio interview where he emphatically denied having been sexually abused - or knowing of sexual abuse - when he was a resident of the Rosminian institution

Gabriel Byrne and "Recovered Memory"

In the new RTÉ documentary My Astonishing Self, Irish actor Gabriel Byrne explores the life and times of Irish literary genius George Bernard Shaw. Byrne's treatment of Shaw's political views - and specifically his attempts to excuse Shaw for supporting Stalin, Hitler AND Mussolini - attracted some hostile comment on the politics.ie website. 

I pointed out that in a 1999 interview with the Irish Independent, Gabriel Byrne had claimed that he was "physically and verbally" abused by the Christian Brothers when he attended their school in Drimnagh in Dublin - and was later sexually abused by a priest in England. However in an interview with Gay Byrne on RTE a decade later, he claimed that the Christian Brothers had sexually abused him.  

Comment by "Wagmore"
Just watching Gabriel Byrne documentary on George Bernard Shaw on RTE. Typical guff. Usual suspects show up to champion the cause of one of their own. Diarmuid Ferriter, Fintan O Toole, Michael D and Daire O Brien etc. Shaw incredible ability to see the big picture. Told it how it was etc etc. Very little about the link below till about five minutes left when Fintan tells us that his support for Hitler and Mussolini shouldn't be used as a stick to beat him or to take away from all he contributed. Typical lefties----what's a few million slaughtered and oppressed so long as you're a card carrying Socialist. Gas, a clip shows Shaw's picture with a framed picture of Stalin on the mantlepiece. Don't remember the luvvies giving the same wide berth to Francis Stuart for his perceived Nazi sympathies during WW2. 

Byrne tells us his abiding sense when he thinks of Shaw the man is one of compassion, humanity and courage. I suspect the slaughtered millions would beg to differ.
How Shaw defended Stalin's mass killings
[Article in Daily Telegraph on 18 June 2003]

Kilbarry1:  reply to Wagmore
George Bernard Shaw differed from other Stalinists like Sean O'Casey, in that he had kind words to say about Hitler and Mussolini as well. Shaw was a supporter of Dictatorship AS SUCH - not just the left-wing variety. Still there is a certain logic and honesty about this approach that Gabriel Byrne himself lacks.

This is Gabriel Byrne in an interview with Stephen O'Brien of the Irish Independent on 9 August 1999

ACTOR Gabriel Byrne has revealed publicly for the first time that he was the victim of both physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Catholic clergy. The star of The Usual Suspects and Defence of the Realm said he was subjected to repeated physical and verbal abuse while a pupil at the Christian Brothers national school in Dublin's Drimnagh. [My emphasis]

And he told a Sunday newspaper he was sexually abused by a priest who was his Latin teacher in England after he had entered a junior novitiate (in preparation for the priesthood) at the age of just eleven. That man is now dead. ....

And this is him telling a SOMEWHAT similar story to Gay Byrne on RTE television a decade later - as reported by the Irish correspondent of The Guardian on 19 January 2010. There is however a rather important difference. 

Gabriel Byrne tells of childhood sexual abuse
Actor says he was abused by Christian Brothers in Ireland, and while training in England to be a priest

The Irish actor Gabriel Byrne has revealed that he was sexually abused by Christian Brothers as a child. [My emphasis] The actor also disclosed that at the age of 11 he went to England to train as a priest but was sexually abused by a member of the clergy there.

Byrne said he had struggled with alcoholism and depression in the past, and that he had been "deeply hurt" over the abuse he endured as a boy. The star of films such Miller's Crossing and The Usual Suspects spoke openly about the abuse to Ireland's most famous broadcaster, Gay Byrne, on a new show, "The Meaning of Life", on RTÉ television.

"Unfortunately, I experienced some sexual abuse," he said. "It was a known and admitted fact of life amongst us that there was this particular man, and you didn't want to be left in the dressing room with him." "It took many years to come to terms with it and to forgive those incidents that I felt had deeply hurt me."

Another priest sexually abused him when he was 11 at the English seminary. "It didn't go on over a prolonged period but it happened at a very, very vulnerable moment," Byrne recalled. .....

When he spoke on 'The Meaning of Life', was Gabriel Byrne suffering from Recovered Memory in relation to the nature of his "abuse" by the Christian Brothers? Alternatively did he just assume that Gaybo would not bother to do any research and certainly would not ask him any awkward questions?

Question by paddycomeback;

"he was sexually abused by a priest who was his Latin teacher IN ENGLAND after he had entered a junior novitiate"

Am I misreading? Both versions say the abuse was in England.

Kilbarry1: reply to paddycomeback

Both accounts say he was "sexually" abused in England by a priest. In his second account he claims to have been sexually abused by the Christian Brothers in Ireland as well. His first account [a decade before] only mentions "verbal and physical" abuse by the Christian Brothers.

Incidentally Gabriel Byrne is very comfortable praising a man who supported Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini. HOWEVER if Shaw had been an admirer of Franco, Byrne would have loathed him. Franco was a Catholic and a pro-Western dictator and the fact that he killed a lot fewer people was irrelevant to hate-filled types like Shaw and Byrne. Shaw only favoured dictators who shared his own hatreds - and Gabriel Byrne appreciates that.

Patrick Galvin, 'Song for a Raggy Boy' and "Recovered Memory"

Comment by darkhorse3
You're nobody in the Arts world if you weren't sexually abused by a Priest

Kilbarry1 - reply to darkhorse3
True the film "Song for a Raggy Boy" released in 2003 is based on the "Autobiography" of Patrick Galvin ("Irish poet, singer, playwright, and prose and screen writer" as per Wikipedia) written a decade earlier in 1991. The culminating scene in the FILM features a boy being kicked to death by a "Brother in Christ". There is no such scene in the BOOK but Patrick Galvin is credited as the screen-writer for the film!

Like Gabriel Byrne, perhaps it took him a decade to "recover his memory"?

NOTE: I have an article on my website IrishSalem.com with the title
THE GENERAL, THE OBLATES AND "SONG FOR A RAGGY BOY
that goes into more detail on this issue. 

In an unpublished letter to the Sunday Tribune in 2006 I wrote:
.....I have read a number of mini-biographies of Patrick Galvin on the Internet and elsewhere. Either they don't say what industrial school he was in or they refer to "St. Judes" i.e. the fictitious school in the film. What institution did Patrick Galvin attend? And does "Song for a Raggy Boy" have the same relationship to truth as the Da Vinci Code?

However in 2007 there were media articles quoting Galvin as stating that he had attended St. Conleth's reform school in Daingean, Co. Offaly which was run by the Oblate Order of priests (and brothers). This is also stated in the Wikipedia article on Patrick Galvin. Daingean reformatory is well known in Ireland because one of its residents in the 1960s went on to become Ireland's most famous criminal - Martin Cahill also known as "The General" who is widely quoted as saying "If anyone corrupted me it was those mad monks down in the bog."  (Mind you he was sent there after his fifth criminal conviction!) Assassinated by the IRA in 1994, Martin Cahill was shortly thereafter the subject of two admiring Hollywood movies, The General  directed by John Boorman (1998) and Ordinary Decent Criminals starring Kevin Spacey (2000). So Patrick Galvin attended a well known institution - albeit three decades prior to The General! ***

OR DID HE? Because of the (literally) unbelievable allegations in the book - and even more so, the film - I once wondered if Galvin had ever been in any residential institution run by Catholic clergy. However I was recently told that the writer did indeed attend such an institution but that he was actually in St Patricks Reformatory in Upton, Co Cork which was run by the Rosminian  Order of priests and brothers. This makes sense as Galvin was born in Cork City, both Upton and Daingean were reform institutions for young people convicted of crimes (as opposed to industrial schools), but Upton was very much closer to Galvin's home than Daingean.

Note that the Rosminian Order was NOT very well known to the Irish public - at least until May 2009 when Michael O'Brien denounced an Irish Government Minister on live television, while claiming that he had been "raped, buggered and beaten" by priests of the Order. And that is where this article begins!

CONCLUSION:

In all three cases, there was a the time-lag of about a decade between the original statement and the "enhanced" one that made allegations of child sexual abuse for the first time OR more serious claims than the original. During this period, the media whipped up hysteria about child abuse and encouraged an atmosphere of hatred against the Catholic Church in Ireland. Apparently sectarian hatred is OK if it is directed against Catholic clergy (although not against Jewish rabbis and least of all against Islamic mullahs!)

*** [Patrick Galvin suffered a stroke in 2003 aged 76, from which he never fully recovered prior to his death eight years later. In 2007 he could easily have imagined - or accepted a suggestion from admirers - that he had been in the, by then, "notorious" Daingean institution.]

Are There Very Few False Allegations of Rape and Child Abuse [3]

Colm O'Gorman - 'One in Four' Victim Group and Amnesty International

This is a follow up to two previous posts with titles "Are There Very Few False Allegations of Rape and Child Abuse [1]" and "Are There Very Few False Allegations of Rape and Child Abuse [2]"

[I highlight  a photo of Colm O'Gorman because of his role as founder of one of Ireland's largest Victim groups 'One in Four', his present position as head of Amnesty Ireland and, not least, his statement in March 2006 that false allegations of child abuse against Catholic priests did not constitute a problem!]

The following is a extract from a discussion on the Spiked-online website in December 2015 that followed an article by Mike Hume entitled  "The Year We Forgot What Free Speech Means".  I am concentrating on a debate between myself [Kilbarry1 AKA Rory Connor] and an Australian Jack Richards. The debate ranges over the meaning of human nature, the colonisation of Australia, the Aboriginals and "White Guilt", Social Darwinism,  Islam, Christianity and Humanism - and of course the role of the Catholic Church! 

I start with a quote from Jack Richards directed at another participant, humanist Carl Barjer:
"Homo sapiens are animals, very clever animals who can make telephones, computers and rockets, but animals none the less. All animals herd with their own, mark out their territories and defend them, they protect their own gene pool, and as Muslims clearly demonstrate, hide their women away like precious possessions so they won’t be tainted by the blood of other tribes. Only complete fools like you, blinded by idealistic and ridiculous ideologies, believe that the lion will lie down with the lamb and we can all be one big happy family of “humanity”. That’s just such rotten bullshit and dangerous bullshit. Every pack has its dominant male and female and a pecking order and if you aren’t prepared to fight, lie and steal for yours you’ll get nothing. And that’s exactly what you’ll deserve."

This is Social Darwinism (although I don't think the term was used in the discussion) and it's not something I would normally sympathise with. However faced with the kind of leaders we have today in both Church and State, it's an ideology that I can at least understand!

Another unkind comment from Jack Richards follows regarding Australian Aboriginals:
"Everything in this country was built by whites: every road, railway, farm, bridge, house, dock, drain, power grid, airport, mill, factory every last endeavour of every kind. The Aborigine have contributed nothing. They are virtually unemployable and are a huge and costly burden on society. In 1990 there was a paper on what they cost us over and above the welfare available to all Australians. That was 25 years ago and between Federal, State and Local Aboriginal specific programs we were spending an extra $41,000 p.a. per person. I know that paper well - I wrote it and did the research when I worked for a then Federal Cabinet Minister."

Debate with Jack Richards on Spiked-Online website

I replied to him as follows (December 2015)

Kilbarry1: First reply to Jack Richards 
I agree with a lot of what you say, while being dubious about the way you say it - but then I wouldn't describe myself as a "dominant" male. For an example of the way a community can self-destruct by adopting a lunatic variety of idealism, see my article on the decadence of the Irish Sisters of Mercy
The Sisters responded to bogus allegations of child abuse (including child murder) by apologising to the false accusers on the basis that they must have suffered great pain in order to make them say such things. The apology was supposed to "heal the pain" but surprisingly it didn't - even after the Sisters repeated it on numerous occasions. After they paid £20,000 to the parents of a child who died decades before, the parents accused a nun of murdering the baby by burning holes in its legs with a red hot poker. Try Googling the newspaper headline:
"HOT POKER WAS USED ON LITTLE MARION.. NO CASH WILL GET HER BACK; I THINK MY BABY WAS MURDERED AT THE ORPHANAGE, SAYS PAYOUT MUM."

The present position is that the Merciful Sisters blame the Irish Bishops for their problems. Their rationale may be that the Bishops made some (albeit inadequate) efforts to defend themselves - including a couple of successful libel actions against false accusers.

Jack Richards: First reply to   Kilbarry1 
I once read that the number of Irish children who were molested by the Catholic Clergy in Ireland actually out-number those who were not.

Is there anyone in this world who is not an hereditary victim? Before about 1975 no-one believed that victimhood could be inherited - but indeed it can.

My whole life has been miserable and agonising because of my inherited victimhood - and so far I haven't received a cent in compensation nor an official apology from the British Government! Bastards!

You see I am the direct descendant of 10 Convicts transported to New South Wales. I'll forget about most of them who were just English thieves - even though one was a 14 year-old boy sentenced to death, along with his mother, for burglary in 1786 in Somerset. They hanged her but he received a reprieve and just got 14 years transportation. He spent 2 years on a hulk in Portsmouth Harbour and then shipped out on the "Neptune" with the Second Fleet in 1789. When it arrived in Sydney over a third of the convicts had died from mistreatment and starvation.

But my real claim to victimhood dates from 1803 when Mick and Kathleen arrived in chains from Cork, Ireland. They'd taken part in the uprising of the "United Irishmen" and were thrown into the dungeons of Dublin Castle. They both got 7 years and their crime was "Taking an Illegal Oath".

The British Government robbed me of my heritage, my culture, my language and all my relatives! I've never gotten over it!

I often think that if it hadn't been for the stinking British invaders of Ireland and their barbarism I'd be sitting in O'Reilly's Pub in Cork, drinking Guinness, singing laments in Gaelic, dancing without moving my arms and saying "to be sure to be sure" in a broad Irish brogue.

Instead of that luxury, here I am on the other side of the world enduring an Australian summer a few hours drive from the white-sand beaches on the Pacific Coast and being forced to drink Carlton at the local Pub and listen to Country and Western music on the juke-box and suffer all the horrors of living on a huge island full of useless stuff like all those Herefords grazing my paddocks, the iron, coal, gold, silver, copper, uranium, lead, bauxite etc and living in a country that rates only 2nd the UN's Human Development Index.

I think the British Government should compensate me for the huge personal and cultural losses my family has endured.

Kilbarry1: Second reply to Jack Richards  
"I once read that the number of Irish children who were molested by the Catholic Clergy in Ireland actually out-number those who were not.
Is there anyone in this world who is not an hereditary victim? ..."

The reason you heard that is probably because we have about 10 separate Child Abuse "Victims" groups in Ireland, almost every one of them funded by the Irish State and literally every one of them founded after our Taoiseach (Prime Minister) made a public apology to "Victims of institutional abuse" in May 1999.

Of the 10 groups, FOUR were involved in allegations of child murder against the Christian Brothers and Sisters of Mercy. The first claims related to real children who had actually died but later ones referred to periods when no child died of ANY cause. Re the latter, I coined the phrases "Murder of the Undead" and "Victimless Murders". (Google will complete the phrases for you in Ireland and hopefully in Australia as well).

The leader of a FIFTH group wrote an article in the Irish Times in March 2006 explaining that some people believed that false allegations of child abuse were being made against Irish priests but "fortunately" that did NOT constitute a problem. A few months previously, two men had been convicted of trying to blackmail a well-known Irish priest, by threatening to make a false allegation against him but perhaps this gentlemen had "forgotten". His mistake was forgiven however as, a couple of years later he was appointed executive director of Amnesty International in Ireland.

The leader of a SIXTH group declared in a public outburst on national television aimed at a Government Minister that he had been "raped, buggered and beaten" in an industrial school run by priests of the Rosminian Order. The leader of a RIVAL "Victims" group unhelpfully pointed out that he had specifically denied this and praised the Rosminians in a radio interview years before. (The two leaders were involved in a difference of opinion as to how large sums of Government money for Victims should be spent).

The leader of a SEVENTH group was involved in a furious row with his own members regarding Compensation funds the group had received from Religious Congregations. He said he had come into his office one day and found a knife stuck in his desk etc

Possibly the remaining three (or so) Victims' groups are credible OR maybe they are just small and I don't know much about them.

Kilbarry1: Second reply to Jack Richards - Continued
For those who want to check out the gory details:

(A) In 2006 I attempted to summarise false allegations of child MURDER (in particular) directed at the Catholic Church. The link is here
"Letter to Sunday Tribune Re Child Killing Allegations"

I explained at the time that "If someone accuses you of child abuse 30, 40 or even 50 years ago there is no way you can clear your name. However if the same person claims you killed a child and no child died at the time, then this says a great deal about your accuser's credibility."

At the time I composed the article, I had forgotten about the claim in the UK Daily Mirror (11 October 1997) that a Sister of Mercy had murdered a baby by burning holes in its legs with a red hot poker. One reason I forgot, was that the Sisters of Mercy were so "compassionate" to the accuser that they failed to sue. (The editors of The Mirror employ very high powered lawyers to protect themselves against libel actions, BUT they also realise that decadent imbeciles represent to threat.)

(B) The current executive director of Amnesty International (Ireland) wrote in the Irish Times on 29 March 2006 that "In the past few months a number of commentators have suggested that grave injustice is being done to priests falsely accused of child sexual abuse. Such suggestions rightly concern fair minded people, but remarkably, no evidence of any kind has been presented to suggest that false allegations are being made or that the rights of those accused are being abused.”

Just two months previously, two brothers had been convicted of trying to blackmail a priest Father Michael Kennedy by threatening to accuse him of child abuse. I believe that Fr Kennedy is a relative of THE Kennedys so it is remarkable that Mr O'Gorman had forgotten about the case (or maybe didn't consider it significant?)
(See my article on "Colm O'Gorman" Note the  paragraphs headed "Colm O'Gorman, Nora Wall and Amnesty International" and the following one.)

(C) Very handily, there IS an easily available video of the man who denounced a Government Minister on national TV for ignoring his own experiences of rape at the hands of Rosminian priests. Check out the Comments section of the Spiked article "No Justice in a Year of Moral Crusades" by Luke Gittos. The video is one of two posted by "holliegrieg justice" and I replied to him.
[See my recent article "Recovered Memory in Ireland - and Allegations of Child Abuse" for video of Victims' group leader denouncing Government Minister]

(D) The saga of the Victims' charity "Right of Place" and the dispute about the use of its funds WAS actually covered by another Victims' group "Alliance Support". The resignation of the Right of Place founder is dealt with here   
and there are several background articles on the Alliance Support website about the affair.
[Alliance Support website is no longer operative.There are a number of articles about "Right of Place" and its founder Noel C. Barry on The Shame of Ireland website here. See also Comment below ] 

On a related matter, several Irish Bishops were also accused of being paedophiles or conspiracy to defend paedophile priests but I won't bother you with THOSE gory details here. (As per normal, the claims were nonsense. ) However that is just Ireland. Perhaps accusers and their Child Abuse Victims' groups are more credible in Australia?

Jack Richards: Second reply to Kilbarry1 
When I was 6 years old I was abused by a Sister of the Good Samaritan. The old bitch flogged me into unconsciousness in a beating that lasted for about 2 hours. She broke two canes on me and finished the job with a third. When my father complained, rather forcefully, to Mother Superior and showed her the 40+ "stripes' I had from the ankles up - including two across the face - she dismissed it as being necessary discipline. Later than night the Parish Priest, an Irishmen as they all were in those days nearly 60 years ago, rang my father and threatened to have him charged with assault for accosting the nuns! That was my last day in a Catholic School.

I am of the view that there were many genuine incidents of brutality and sexual abuse carried out by the Clergy in those days, and up to very recent times, who were protected by the Church and the police and judiciary. But it wasn't just the Catholics as the current Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse in Australia shows - they were all in it. So far they've nailed Catholic Priests and Brothers, Anglican Ministers, Salvation Army, Seventh Day Adventists, Methodists, Baptists, Jehovah Witnesses and Jewish Rabbis. It seems that any organisation that had unfettered access to children had its quota of paedophiles. From what has been revealed during the course of the RC, most of the "abuse" was homosexual in nature - especially in Catholic institutions.

Having said that, I recall that in the 80s and 90s there was an outbreak of "repressed memory" syndrome when literally thousand of people suddenly remembered being abused by their fathers who all seemed to belong to Satanic Cults. There was an epidemic across the USA, here and the western world generally - and 99.9999% of it was bullshit. Now it's called "False memory syndrome" because the ideas were planted by zealous "psychologists" who attributed all psychological disorders in later life to childhood sexual abuse. Some American enthusiasts wrote a text book on the "symptoms" of childhood sexual abuse and one of the symptoms, believe it or not, was "failure to remember sexual abuse"!

What's happening in Ireland is starting to remind me of the witch hunts of the 16th-18th Centuries and the epidemic of denunciations during the Purges in 1930's Soviet Union. All these accusations need to be looked at both sympathetically and with much scepticism because there's a very good chance they're not true. If there're large sums of money involved the credibility of the accusers must be proportionately reduced. But it's not just money that provokes denunciators: there's all that kudos and sympathy and victimhood to be milked. For some people, being a victim is the high point of their otherwise worthless life and they really get off on it. Human nature is a strange thing. I live by the theory that if you trust no-one you'll never be disappointed. I have met far more compulsive liars, frauds, swindlers and conmen than I have honest men. Indeed I can't remember ever meeting an honest man or woman.

I might add that for a few years I worked in a Government department investigating theft and fraud. It was often surprising that the people we caught stealing were very well educated, held high positions, and didn't need to steal - and often the theft was so petty. For example, one very senior Civil Servant was caught for stealing the tyres off a Government owned vehicle. For the price of a set of tyres - about $600 - he lost his job and was fined double their value plus has a life-long conviction for dishonesty.

But some people are such accomplished liars that, had I not known they were as guilty as sin and had the evidence of it, I'd have believed their denials. I got one woman for stealing a computer and a printer. When interviewed she denied it, of course, and was so terribly indignant that we'd accuse her! What she didn't know was that we had CCTV film of her loading the goods into the boot of her car. So after her swearing on the life her children that she was innocent, and quite convincingly doing so, we showed her the film.

One major investigation had to do with a Religious School. In Australia non-government schools get subsidised for every student they educate. I forget the exact amount but it was about $2,600 per student per year and the schools have to complete a census upon which the grants, capital and recurrent, are made. In any event, the Principal of the school - a very religious man who insisted on praying for us at every opportunity - had been fudging the census and claiming for 30-40 children who did not exist and pocketing the money for himself. This had been going on for some years. Again, he was a very convincing fraud and liar and, even when confronted with damning evidence in his own hand-writing, he denied having done it! He was so convincing in proclaiming his innocence that a Committee of supporters was formed to defend him against our "false accusations" and "racist" attempts to persecute an honest man. He kept up his charade until the day of his committal hearing in the Supreme Court - then he confessed, admitted it all, and pled guilty when the Prosecution offered to drop a couple of charges. 

Never trust anyone, no matter how honest and convincing they seem, and you'll never be disappointed.

Kilbarry1:  Final reply to Jack Richards 
Regarding your last sentence, I really think that you are TOO cynical. I know some very decent human beings who - nevertheless- would not be too scrupulous about twisting the truth to get an increased Government grant or insurance payout. I probably wouldn't do either myself but that is partly because I have poor communications skills; on one occasion when I had a genuine insurance claim, I handled it so badly that I know they suspected me of fraud!

Re your first sentence I know a lady who was very badly battered in kindergarten - by a female SECULAR teacher who later was admitted to a mental hospital. My friend also said that the woman could be very nice outside class but should never have become a teacher.

This discussion could go on forever. I believe that the overwhelming majority of paedophile claims are false. In Ireland members of "Victims'" groups hardly ever raise objections when their leaders make transparently false allegations - of child murder for example. (The only thing that seems to arouse their ire, is controversies about money). I assume the reason they don't complain is that their own allegations are equally spurious - and they are making them for financial reasons.

I know less about Australia but I recall a case a few years ago in which the head of the Vincentian Order was arrested amid huge publicity, for supposedly molesting a student 20 years previously. He was released when he was able to prove that he was not on the Australian subcontinent at the time in question. (If he had been, perhaps he would have been convicted?). There was a similar case in Cornwall, Ontario (Canada) when a number of nutcases accused practically every prominent citizen of the town of belonging to a paedophile ring. NATURALLY this included the then Bishop and it's not entirely unsurprising that he had not been Bishop, nor in the diocese, at the relevant time.

There have been several allegations against Bishops in Ireland, some so ludicrous that they embarrassed our anti-clerics. I summarised them here:
8 Falsely Accused Bishops - The Innocent Who Merit an Explanation
Note that three former Archbishops were accused. There are only four Archbishops on the island of Ireland so I await an allegation against the Archbishop of Tuam (present or past). Cynicism is the daughter of Hysteria and cynicism is all we will be left with when this wave of hysteria finally runs its course. REAL victims of child abuse will find it very difficult to be taken seriously then.

CONCLUSION: "Stolen Generations" of Children?

Jack Richards is no friend of the Catholic Church and Ireland has no real equivalent of Australian aboriginals. However some of what he says about the supposedly "Stolen Generation" of aboriginal children does resonate in this country. I am thinking about the allegations of "child abuse on an industrial scale" in residential schools and also the hysteria about the Tuam babies supposedly buried in a cess pit.

Jack Richards writes:
In 1962 I attended a public school in outback NSW [New South Wales] with a large Aboriginal cohort. There was a half-caste girl who was captured and carted away by welfare. She lived on the banks of the Lachlan River in a hollow under a sheet of corrugated iron. Being a "yella fella" she was rejected by the (racist) full bloods. She stank to high heaven, had head lice, scabies, impetigo and was malnourished - but the worst affliction was an untreated suppurating ear infection that had become fly-blown. You could see the maggots crawling in the oozing pus. She was about 10 years old and was regularly molested by bucks of all ages. She was taken away to the Far West Children's home - a hospital in the salubrious Sydney suburb of Manly where she was treated for those diseases as well as her gonorrhoea. About a year later she came back. 

She's still in the same town and is now an Aboriginal activist who claims to have been "stolen"!!!!! Her life was saved, she was cured of loathsome diseases and parasites and brought back to health from the edge of death, and yet she claims she was carted away by evil whites; indeed she was "stolen" from a loving family! The truth is, her mother was a drunken whore who'd sell herself for a bottle of beer and her father was unknown and no-one in the tribe gave a shit about her. The only people who did were the white welfare officers. .........

You see, the truth is a bit hard to confront. Like that girl I knew at school 53 years ago, it would be a very difficult thing to admit that your mother was a drunken prostitute who had no idea who your father was - just some anonymous white drifter who paid his shilling - and that your "tribe" didn't want you or care about you. It's much easier to believe that evil whites stole you so as to remove you from your "culture" and drove off your father who really loved you. 

Well perhaps the aboriginal girl's very difficult childhood provides at least a partial excuse. But what about the Irish journalists who publish allegations of child murder at a time when no child died, or the politician who brings down a government by inventing a tale of a conspiracy between an Archbishop and an Attorney General to protect a paedophile priest?

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".

Justice Ministers Kevin O'Higgins to Charlie Flanagan: from Decency to Decadence

Kevin O'Higgins Minister for Justice 1922-27

Charlie Flanagan, Minister for Justice and Equality June 2017 - ?

Introduction and Summary

Diarmaid Ferriter has an article on the history of the Department of Justice in the Irish Times on 2 December - to show the background to the current Scandal/Hysteria
Department of Justice has History of Dismissing Challenges

The article is behind a paywall but Ferriter  stresses the huge challenges faced by the State in its early years - and the role of the Dept of Justice and its first Minister Kevin O'Higgins.

... In most of these tasks civil servants played a key stabilising role and also generated much power for themselves. As JJ McElligott assistant secretary of department of finance in 1923 saw it, one of the advantages of the inexperience of O'Higgins and his colleagues and the distraction of the Civil War was that it allowed civil servants to get on with State building without too much political interference.

It is no harm to remember this heritage in light of the turmoil witnessed this week. A viable democracy and effective Civil Service emerging in the most difficult of circumstances were two of the main achievements of that era. Another enduring legacy of that period was excessive centralisation, too much power in the hands of individual civil servants and contempt for those who sought to expose wrongdoing or ask troubling questions.

On the assassination of Kevin O'Higgins in 1927, Ferriter writes:

O'Higgins was one of the most intriguing characters of the Irish Revolution and the subsequent counter-revolution  of which he was in the vanguard. Shot dead by three IRA men acting independently on his way to Mass in 1927, he is often regarded as the uncompromising "hard man" of Cumann  na nGaedheal in  the 1920s. In many respects he was, but he was no unthinking militarist with a lust for blood, and even during the Civil War was anxious legal normality take the place of martial law.

HOWEVER

 "There are no real rules of war", O'Higgins insisted, in defending the execution of anti-Treaty Republicans: "The safety and preservation of the people is the highest law." The attempt to dehumanise his Civil War opponents was propagandist caricature and ignored the sincerity and depth of their feelings of betrayal; just as he, in turn, was caricatured as a man whose heart had turned to stone. It had done nothing of the sort. In his colleague Eoin MacNeill's memoir of these fervid years, finally published last year, MacNeill recalled how he witnessed the assassination of O'Higgins in 1927. As MacNeill cradled him, O'Higgins told him "I want you to say that I forgive my murderers".

This was all the more remarkable given that four years previously during the Civil War, O'Higgins had buried his father after Republicans killed him during an attack on his house......

Compare that to the behaviour of the current Minister for Justice who slandered former Sister of Mercy Nora Wall in the Dail in 2009 and who is now trying to blame his own civil servants for his political problems!
Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan and Former FG Chair Phil Hogan Vs George Hook and Nora Wall

Resignation of Tanaiste (Deputy PM) Frances Fitzgerald 28 Nov 2017

Frances Fitzgerald succeeded Alan Shatter as Minister for Justice after the latter was forced to resign in May 2014  and held the post until June 2017 when she was appointed Tanaiste. She was then succeeded by Charlie Flanagan as Minister for Justice. Notably Shatter himself had been  forced to resign in a bogus "scandal" that was linked to the Sergeant  Maurice McCabe whistleblower affair. A report to the then Taoiseach (Prime Minister) by Sean Guerin  into allegations made by McCabe claimed that Shatter had "not heeded" McCabe's voice. HOWEVER in May 2016 the O'Higgins Report concluded that Shatter, as Minister for Justice, had taken a personal interest in McCabe's complaints and allegations, had dealt with them appropriately, promptly and reasonably and that there had been a failure by McCabe to respond to letters sent by Shatter and his officials to McCabe's solicitors. Typically, this vindication was of no obvious benefit to Shatter - who had also lost his Dail  seat in the February 2016 General Election. Nor did it seem to do McCabe any harm!

Alan Shatter's political career was effectively ended by a fake scandal that was based on  the allegations made by Sergeant Maurice McCabe. I strongly suspect the current Charleton Tribunal will vindicate Frances Fitzgerald conduct when she was Minister for Justice, just as Mr Justice Kevin O'Higgins vindicated Alan Shatter. But will it make any difference? Fitzgerald was forced to resign because she allegedly knew about "smears" being used by the Garda high command in 2015 when they were defending themselves against allegations made by Sergeant McCabe in the course of the investigation by Mr. Justice O'Higgins.  In two recently discovered emails, from 2015, when she was justice minister, Fitzgerald was warned about “aggressive tactics” being deployed against Sgt McCabe by the Garda leadership. But what did these "smears"and "aggressive tactics" consist of? Why nothing more than the perfectly normal tactics used by defense lawyers when they are faced with false allegations against their clients. In addition to clearing Alan Shatter, Mr Justice O'Higgins concluded that claims of corruption made by Sergeant McCabe against five of his superiors - up to and including Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan - were false. It appears that the "aggressive tactics" of Garda management were both justified and successful! So why then was Frances Fitzgerald forced to resign?

The problem is that politicians - on all sides - insist on treating Maurice McCabe as a sacred cow, a secular saint who can do no wrong. This has continued even after the publication of the O'Higgins Report. As reported in an article by Senan Molony, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said in the Dail on 21st November:

"I want to say Sgt McCabe is somebody who I have had dealings with. I met him when I was minister for transport, tourism and sport when he made allegations relating to penalty points. He is one of the bravest people that I have ever encountered in public life and he is somebody who has been very much wronged by the State on a number of occasions because of his bravery and because of his willingness to shine a light into some dark places."

Frances Fitzgerald  had expressed similar unconditional support for the whistleblower. This placed her and the Government in a ludicrous dilemma where the Opposition expected them to prevent Sergeant McCabe's Garda colleagues and superiors from defending themselves against false accusations made by the whistleblower.  Any attempt to do so was seen by the Opposition as "aggressive tactics" and "smears"!

 [ As also reported by Senan Molony, Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin said:
The legal strategy was designed to fundamentally discredit Sgt Maurice McCabe and subvert the course of justice, a matter of enormous importance. This good man could have been destroyed.’ He added: ‘At the same time the Garda commissioner [then Noirin O'Sullivan] was instructing her lawyers to discredit Sgt McCabe, she and the Tánaiste [Frances Fitzgerald] were publicly lauding him. ‘The strategy was fundamentally dishonest.’]

Following the fall of Frances Fitzgerald and the political destruction of Alan Shatter, the current Minister for Justice Charlie Flanagan is now firmly in the firing line. It is useless to  expect him to do the decent thing and criticise Sergeant Maurice McCabe. Clearly he is going to throw his civil servants to the wolves in an attempt to save his own political skin!

Charlie Flanagan (and PM Leo Varadkar) Vs Their Own Civil Servants

Charlie Flanagan has publicly supported Sergeant Maurice McCabe as did Frances Fitzgerald when she was Minister for Justice, not to mention Taoiseach Leo Varadkar who supported Fitzgerald until the media and political pressure to dump her became impossible to withstand. Flanagan and Varadkar are the likely next targets of this witch-hunt and they have no intention of questioning the credibility of Sergeant McCabe. Accordingly they need to provide the witch-hunters with other scapegoats. Unfortunately the leader of Fianna Fail Michael Martin, is taking the view that Fine Gael's difficulty is FF's opportunity and piling on the pressure.

Jennifer Bray Deputy Political Editor of The Irish Daily Mail wrote on 30 November:
After a fortnight that saw one minister and a senior civil servant quit, another minister apologise to the Dail  and the Taoiseach forced to correct the House record twice, Mr Varadkar's position has weakened and Mr Martin is demanding major reforms in how this Government works - particularly within the harshly criticised  Justice Department. [My emphasis] ......

An independent group will be established to implement the recommendations of the Toland Report, which was published in 2014, and found there was a 'deferential relationship' towards the gardai in the department. The group will review the specific relationship between the department and the  gardai. ..
Mr. Varadkar has said that an external inquiry will investigate how key emails about the treatment of whistleblower Maurice McCabe were mot among the 230 documents sent to the Charleton Tribunal, which is inquiring into the treatment of the Garda sergeant. And after twice correcting the record of the Dail,the Taoiseach has said: 'I will be holding the department and its senior officials to account to ensure that neither I nor any minister nor any member of the Dail is ever put in that position again.' .....

The Taoiseach said that the 'change and implementation group' is to review the culture in the department and make recommendations, particularly in light of the evidence of a secretive culture, and a failure to provide accurate information to the Oireachtas. ...

Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan also this week apologised for his role in the saga. He said he was 'shocked and frankly, horrified' that there were records in the department that should have been provided to the tribunal. He said it has been ''a major challenge at every step to obtain complete information in a timely manner', adding: 'Indeed on a few occasions recently, information has been provided by me, to the Taoiseach, and then to this House, which has proved subsequently to be inaccurate. This is completely unacceptable and I wish to formally apologise to the Taoiseach, to you Ceann Comhairle, and to the House'.

TRANSLATION: Senior Civil Servants in Department of Justice are to blame for the fact that our Minister for Justice and our Prime Minister refuse to challenge the credibility of a 'whistleblower', several of whose allegations have already been found to be false by the Report of the O'Higgins Commission.of Investigation. 

Three Inquiries Now in Progress (December 2017)

There now appear to be three different inquiries in process centered on the Department of Justice and the Gardai all resulting from the allegations of Sergeant McCabe - he whose conduct must never be criticised!

• One is the Disclosures Tribunal chaired by Mr Justice Peter Charleton of the Supreme Court.to investigate alleged smears against Sergeant McCabe (by senior Gardai whom he wrongly accused of corruption!).  I think this is due to report around Easter 2018. 
• A review of the email 'scandal' ordered by the Taoiseach to ascertain why certain emails now deemed relevant for the Disclosures Tribunal were not discovered earlier by senior civil servants in Department of Justice. This review was originally supposed to be carried out by the Secretary General of Dept of the Taoiseach but - following the usual media outcry - it has been given to an "independent" barrister - senior counsel Michael Collins. The deadline for the completion of the review has according been moved from the end of 2017 to 19 January 2018.
• There is also a "root and branch" investigation into the functioning of the Justice Department which has been agreed between Leo Varadkar and Fianna Fail leader Michael Martin,following the recent controversies. According to the Irish Times on 28 November, Leo Varadkar said that:  An independent change and implementation group [My emphasis] will review the department’s culture particularly in light of “evidence of a continued siloed and secretive culture and a failure to provide accurate information to me and the Oireachtas”. The group would “appropriately structure” the relationship between the Garda and department to ensure accountability and better performance.

When Varadkar talks about a "continued siloed and secretive culture", this is a reference to the Toland Report on the Dept of Justice published in July 2014. Senior civil servants regard the Report as  superficial and misguided. Its publication led to the resignation of then Secretary General Brian Purcell and the extreme difficulty in getting a replacement for him. Noel Waters was supposed to take over as temporary caretaker for a few weeks until a new Secretary General could be appointed. However no credible candidate emerged over the next two years and Waters reluctantly accepted the poisoned chalice in October 2016. Now Waters has also resigned and the Toland Report is back on the agenda with a vengeance!
In an Irish Times article on 30 November  Colm Keena quoted the views of senior civil servants on Toland:
...... Richard Moore, who spent three years with the department as press officer for [Fianna Fail Justice Minister, 2008-11] Dermot Ahern, said he would describe the department as being “protective of rather than deferential to the Garda”. In his experience working in five different departments, the senior staff in the department “are among the best I came across”. His experience was of a high standard of competence and an ability to deal with the crises that are inherent in the work of the department. “There was no headless chicken stuff when I was there.”

Another senior political source said his experience was the direct opposite of what the Toland report said about the department’s relationship with An Garda Síochána. The Toland report was “superficial and unsubstantiated” with very little evidence produced for what was in essence “a series of assertions. In my experience there was no silo mentality,” according to this source. [My emphasis]

Colm Keena remarks that Toland also noted that “one of the key strengths” of the department was the “willingness, flexibility and can-do attitude of many of its loyal staff”. Unfortunately this is something that is unlikely to survive a politically motivated onslaught by our Taoiseach and Minister for Justice, both interested in diverting media attacks away from themselves and towards their civil servants.

FINALLY My Predictions for 2018

Of the three inquiries currently in progress, I think it is likely that:

• Mr Justice Peter Charleton (Disclosures Tribunal) will conclude that senior Gardai did not conduct a "smear campaign" against  Sergeant Maurice McCabe during the course of the O'Higgins Commission of Investigation, but simply defended themselves against the false allegations of corruption that he had made against them.
• Regarding the email inquiry, senior counsel Michael Collins will find that there was nothing untoward about the late location of certain emails for the Disclosures Tribunal. At most he will find that civil servants in Dept of Justice were overwhelmed by the volume of work generated by numerous Parliamentary Questions.
• The REAL disaster will occur  in relation to the "Change and Implementation Group" which is likely to demand that the recommendations of the Toland report be fully implemented in spite of the fact that they are impractical. This is likely to damage the ethos of the Department of Justice and make it difficult to attract and retain high-performing senior civil servants - including a credible new Secretary-General!

Obviously Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan does not have the moral stature to stand up for his civil servants in the face of ignorant or malicious criticism. He will agree to implement any "reforms" in order to save his own political skin!