I didn’t make ‘horrific things’ claim about McCabe

MARTIN Callinan has said he would never talk about a member of the force in the way RTÉ journalist Philip Boucher-Hayes claims he did.

The ex-Garda chief had visited the national broadcaster in December 2013 to make the commissioner’s annual appearance on the Crimecall show, which Mr Boucher-Hayes co-presented.

He agreed that he had refused to discuss the penalty points issue, although he had been asked to do so by Mr Boucher-Hayes, because he said he did not believe this was the correct forum for that debate. He added that he had recently held a press conference on the topic.

In a statement to the tribunal, Mr Boucher-Hayes said that, in a private conversation in an RTÉ corridor, Mr Callinan had offered some background information about the penalty points story.

‘He told me that McCabe was a troubled individual and that he had a “lot of psychological issues and psychiatric issues”,’ the presenter said. ‘He claimed that McCabe was motivated by a set of grievances against Garda management and that he was famous within An Garda Síochána for this. He warned me that McCabe was not to be trusted and went on to add that there were other things he could tell me about him, “horrific things, the worst kind of thing”, but he did not elaborate further.’

Mr Callinan yesterday said he had not said those things, and that he would never talk about a member of the gardaí like that.

He said he merely said, ‘as everybody knew’, that Sgt McCabe had made a number of allegations, and that these had been investigated and publicly reported on by Assistant Commissioner John O’Mahoney.

Tribunal counsel Patrick Marrinan, SC asked him if there was any reason Mr Boucher-Hayes would ‘invent’ a conversation that did not take place, and paint him in a bad light. He said he did not know.

He said he could not reconcile the obvious differences between the two accounts, but speculated that Mr Boucher-Hayes may have spoken to other gardaí that day.

‘These are very strong accusations, and they are untrue,’ he stated.

Mr Marrinan said the two accounts were ‘diametrically opposed’, and that Mr Boucher-Hayes would be giving evidence to the tribunal at a later date.