‘That conversation never happened’
RTÉ reporter says he told no-one of sex abuse claim
‘The man is mistaken’
RTÉ crime correspondent Paul Reynolds has rejected any suggestion he told anyone that Sergeant Maurice McCabe was under investigation for child abuse.
DCU professor and newspaper columnist Colum Kenny told the Disclosures Tribunal on June 1 that two security journalists, one with the national broadcaster, had told him in early 2014 that Sgt McCabe was under investigation for child abuse, and that he had got the impression it was an ongoing matter.
Mr Reynolds said yesterday: ‘That conversation never happened... I don’t want to cast aspersions or get into a dispute, but the man is mistaken. For the last five years, Mr Kenny has been writing disparagingly and factually incorrectly about me.’
During his testimony a fortnight ago, Mr Kenny said he felt he was being told to cop himself on and that Sgt McCabe was a person who should not be taken at face value.
Mr Reynolds said yesterday that if Mr Kenny had approached him at a Public Accounts Committee meeting, he would have acknowledged him but would have no further conversation with him. He also said he was never briefed against Sgt McCabe by former Garda press officer Sup David Taylor.
Mr Reynolds said he heard in 2013 that there had been an allegation of sexual abuse, perhaps involving a child, made against Sgt McCabe.
He said he also heard there was an investigation, a file was sent to the DPP and there was no prosecution. He did not say where he heard this, but said he was aware this allegation was known about by politicians, journalists and the Garda.
‘But everybody seemed to know there was nothing in it,’ he said.
He said he never heard Sgt McCabe was embittered by the process, and added that this claim would make no sense to him, ‘because he was exonerated’.
Supt Taylor included Mr Reynolds on a list of 11 journalists he claimed to have briefed negatively about Sgt McCabe. He said he briefed Mr Reynolds on an opportunistic basis, at crime scenes or press conferences, in ‘conversations on the margins’. But Mr Reynolds said yesterday: ‘That didn’t happen.’
He said he never wrote about Ms D – the young woman who made the allegation of sexual abuse against Sgt McCabe. But he agreed he made a number of broadcasts on May 9, 2016 about the final report of the O’Higgins Commission into Sgt McCabe’s concerns on policing issues in Cavan-Monaghan.
This was two days before the report was officially published. He claimed journalistic privilege over his source for the report.
He said he had no idea that Sgt McCabe’s integrity had been called into question at the O’Higgins Commission in 2015, until he saw a Prime Time programme after selected transcripts had been released to the broadcaster.
He said he looked into the matter further and saw more transcripts showing the complaint by counsel for Sgt McCabe had been dealt with by Judge Kevin O’Higgins.
He agreed he had written an online story for RTÉ stating that then-Garda commissioner Martin Callinan had said Sgt McCabe did not cooperate with an internal inquiry into penalty points. Sgt McCabe disputes this claim and says he was never asked to help.
Mr Reynolds said he had seen the directive issued by Mr Callinan, and that Supt Taylor had given an official comment from Garda HQ, stating that Mr Callinan said Sgt McCabe did not cooperate. Mr Reynolds said he did not report that Sgt McCabe ‘refused’ to cooperate, and that his story was accurate based on the facts he was given. He will be questioned further today.
The tribunal also heard from Irish Independent journalist Paul Williams who said he had never been negatively briefed against Sgt McCabe by Supt Taylor, Martin Callinan or Nóirín O’Sullivan.
He said his April 2014 interviews with Ms D were not commissioned or instigated by anyone at Garda HQ. He said he knew nothing of her or her allegation until he was contacted by a detective who knew her father. Mr D told him two journalists had called to his house, and his daughter wanted to talk to him.
He said he did not consider this an attempt to smear Sgt McCabe and his questions related to whether the Garda investigation might have been flawed. GSOC has since found the investigation was not flawed.