McCabe accepts ‘error’ behind false claim

GARDA whistleblower Sergrant Maurice McCabe accepts that the inclusion of a false rape allegation against him in a HSE report was not the result of any deliberate action or ill will, his lawyer has told the Disclosures Tribunal.

Michael McDowell SC said that his client accepted that the evidence established that the inclusion of the false allegation in the 2013 report ‘was some form of cut-and-paste error’. Mr McDowell was speaking yesterday during closing submissions on the first module of the tribunal. Mr McDowell said that the error, however unintentional, should never have occurred, and that the document should have been carefully checked or subjected to review before it was sent out. The failure to do that had significant consequences for the McCabe family, he said.

‘If any of those checks had happened, the sequence of events which followed would not have happened,’ Mr McDowell said.

He also said the tribunal would be left with an ‘unresolved mystery’ as to why a Garda referral was made on Sgt McCabe’s file on April 13 2014, and that the explanation which had been given ‘doesn’t seem to stand together’. ‘There is a pattern here of utter denial and evasion of responsibility,’ Mr McDowell said.

He also said it was ‘extraordinary’ that a report containing false allegations was left in the Garda Commissioner’s office and that no attempt was made to correct it once new information was received. The tribunal has been adjourned until next month.