Reporter insists lawsuit against employers ‘not linked’ to tribunal

‘ISAID where is it coming from – your pal Nóirín? She said, yes.”

That is how journalist Alison O’Reilly recalled one of several conversations with her then-colleague Debbie McCann at the ‘Irish Mail on Sunday’ in 2014.

Ms O’Reilly’s version of events is utterly denied by the Nóirín in question, former Garda commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan, and her predecessor as commissioner, Martin Callinan.

Ms O’Reilly, who gave evidence at length to the Disclosures Tribunal yesterday, also has had her version of events flatly denied in principle by her former colleague and sometime friend Ms McCann. But Labour leader Brendan Howlin later told Mr Justice Charleton he believed Ms O’Reilly when she contacted him in February 2017 – and he still believes her.

Her evidence was that Ms McCann had told her whistleblower Sgt Maurice McCabe was “a child abuser”. She said this and other negative information about Sgt McCabe had come from Ms O’Sullivan and then head of the Garda press office, Superintendent David Taylor.

Supt Taylor has, like Sgt McCabe, made a protected disclosure and given evidence to the tribunal about leading a vilification campaign against the whistleblower. But he has rejected a large portion of a prior statement from Ms O’Reilly.

Ms O’Reilly told tribunal lawyers that she had often talked with her colleague Debbie McCann about the McCabe controversy during the years 2013 and 2014.

She said Ms McCann had told her “someone high up in the guards” had given her the name and address of Ms D, a young woman who had alleged Sgt McCabe had sexually abused her as a child back in 2006. That case was investigated and the DPP had utterly rejected the allegations against Sgt McCabe.

Under Ms O’Reilly’s recall of things, Ms McCann did not accept it was properly investigated and believed there was some form of “cover-up” because Sgt McCabe was a garda. But Ms O’Reilly was suspicious about all this, and after meeting Sgt McCabe and discussing the allegations, she accepted his version of events because that was her “gut feeling”.

Ms O’Reilly went to Mr Howlin in February 2017 and this led her on to giving evidence at the tribunal.

Under cross-examination by lawyer Hugh Mohan, for the publishers of the ‘The Mail’ newspaper, she denied she was motivated in all this by a dispute with her employers that is now the subject of a High Court lawsuit.

“I have a legitimate claim I’m taking to the High Court. It has nothing to do with the tribunal,” she said.

Mr Howlin agreed that his Dáil statement, based on what Ms O’Reilly told him, in February 2014 caused a sensation.

It was the first time Ms O’Sullivan’s name was linked to vilification claims and it also introduced the falsely alleged sexual misconduct of Sgt McCabe.

Mr Howlin acknowledged he had not checked out what Ms O’Reilly told him. But he believed it was credible information that should be put into the public domain.

The Labour leader also said it was important for framing the terms of reference for an inquiry into the matter, which was being discussed by TDs at the time. He insisted it was no more damaging than the actual terms.