‘NÓIRÍN HAD NO HAND, ACT OR PART’ Frances’ McCabe email ‘was no smoking gun’
Judge Peter Charleton finds ‘no evidence’ former Garda chief was involved in the smear campaign
‘THERE is no credible evidence that Deputy Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan played any hand act or part in any campaign conducted by Commissioner Martin Callinan and by Superintendent David Taylor,’ Judge Peter Charleton stated in his report.
‘All of the evidence is to the contrary in fact,’ he added.
The judge said that former Commissioner O’Sullivan had reached out to Sgt McCabe when she came into office in 2014, and had attempted to solve the workplacerelated issues which surrounded him.
The other thing she did, almost before she sat down at her desk, was to ‘get rid of’ Supt Taylor as press officer, he said.
‘She did this because she neither trusted him nor liked him,’ Judge Charleton said.
He said her efforts to help the whistleblower were initially successful, but were undermined by what she felt was the necessity to test where he was coming from in the very serious allegations of corruption that he was making before the O’Higgins Commission.
Judge Charleton made no findings against her in that regard, but he was critical about her lack of memory about key conversations and meetings regarding Sgt McCabe.
He said her decision about how to instruct counsel to test Sgt McCabe’s evidence before the O’Higgins Commission ‘involved talking at length to officials in the Department of Justice and Equality.
‘She is likely to have remembered that, contrary to her evidence, because she realised what was at stake,’ noted the judge. ‘It is also improbable that she did not have an inkling at the very least about Commissioner Callinan’s views.’
He said it was ‘disappointing’ and ‘more than improbable’ that in her evidence she had claimed that nothing was said between her and Commissioner Callinan about Sgt McCabe as they drove together back to Garda Headquarters from the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee on January 23, 2014.
According to Sgt Maurice McCabe’s protected disclosure, Supt Taylor told him ‘that “Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan knew everything”’ and that she was ‘the pusher’ in the campaign to discredit him, not Martin Callinan.
In his statement to tribunal investigators, Supt Taylor said that Noírín O’Sullivan ‘never gave me any instructions… but she was aware of the negative briefing instructions given to me by the former Commissioner Callinan against Sgt Maurice McCabe.
‘I used to text her and to speak to her about it,’ he said.
But no evidence was found on mobile phones or the iPad used by Ms O’Sullivan which supported Supt Taylor’s claims, the judge said. And the judge said that Supt Taylor’s allegations that Ms O’Sullivan would assent to the plan to discredit Sgt McCabe by texting back the words ‘perfect’ or ‘thanks’, were false.
‘What should be recalled in relation to any allegation against Nóirín O’Sullivan is that Supt Taylor was suffused in bitterness against her in consequence of being moved from the Garda Press Office, added to her decision not to nominate him for a post as a chief superintendent,’ the judge explained.
‘His viciousness towards her was compounded by the trouble that he was in, investigated as he was for a series of criminal offences and facing the labyrinthine garda disciplinary process over the same matters. He was perfectly happy to make any claim against her that would assist in his strategy of cloaking himself in rectitude through lying against other people.’
Judge Charleton looked in detail at the allegation that Ms O’Sullivan had ordered her counsel to deploy false allegations of sexual abuse to question Sgt McCabe’s motivation for making complaints about policing practice in Cavan and Monaghan, as these were being investigated by the O’Higgins Commission in early 2015.
He said Ms O’Sullivan ‘never gave such an instruction’ and that the allegations were ‘never deployed’.
‘She would not have been at all interested in engaging in any such
She made efforts to help Sgt McCabe
‘It does not fit with her character’
nasty and discreditable conduct. That does not fit with her character. Instead, her approach was to find out whether there was any evidence to back up the allegations of corruption made by Maurice McCabe,’ the judge said.
‘That is a normal process in respect of any trial where any person alleges improper conduct against another.’
But Judge Charleton said it was improbable that Department of Justice Secretary General, Noel Waters, could not remember a 14minute phone call from the commissioner to him in May 2015.
He said it was likely that the subject of Sgt McCabe came up, and did not accept Ms O’Sullivan’s evidence that it did not.
THE approach of former justice minister Frances Fitzgerald was ‘responsible’ and her judgment ‘an honest appraisal’, Mr Justice Peter Charleton ruled yesterday as he accepted in full the evidence given by the former tánaiste.
Judge Charleton, in yesterday’s report on the Disclosures Tribunal, found her account, including admissions of failing to remember emails, to be convincing.
Ms Fitzgerald resigned from the Cabinet in December over the appearance that she had ignored warnings from officials that counsel for An Garda Síochána was proposing to adopt a hostile approach to whistleblower Sergeant McCabe in a judicial setting.
The political argument will now begin over whether Ms Fitzgerald has been ‘vindicated,’ as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said would prove to be the case. There has been no adverse finding against her whatever.
The Taoiseach has also held open the prospect of Ms Fitzgerald returning to high office. It is not clear if this could happen during this Government or if Fine Gael are returned to power after a general election.
The judge said it was a ‘myth’ that counsel for former Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan was preparing to attack Sgt McCabe’s character – with the implication being that it is also a myth that the minister should have known about it and intervene to stop it. ‘Nothing occurred which Mr Justice [Kevin] O’Higgins could not deal with,’ he wrote.
Yet much time was spent before the tribunal as to ‘the knowledge of the minister, and her recollection in relation to whether there was anything to hint to her that anything improper… was happening before the commission,’ the report says.
‘The tribunal’s view is that there was not.’ Judge Charleton declared: ‘The tribunal accepts the minister’s evidence.’
Many of the emails to Ms Fitzgerald about Garda matters carried the phrase ‘for information,’ which did not imply that action was needed by her, Judge Charleton said. ‘Within the public service, the phrase “for information” notifies the recipient of any email that no action is either needed or expected,’ he said. The email was portrayed as a political smoking gun, but Judge Charleton found that the email was based on a misapprehension.
It seemed probable that the minister read the email but decided ‘not to interfere’. ‘It was not a lazy dodging of the issues but rather a considered response to the information,’ Judge Charleton wrote.
‘A considered response’