JOBSTOWN: THE QUESTIONS
THE DISPUTED EVIDENCE
INCONSISTENCIES in accounts by gardai of the events at the Jobstown protest proved to be a major weakness in the prosecution’s case during the trial. That weakness was fully exploited by the defendants’ lawyers, who characterised what was said as “inaccurate, incomplete or misleading”, and in one case, accused a garda of “deliberately falsifying” evidence. The discrepancies seized upon by the defence were mainly between the witness testimony given by individual gardai and the video footage from various sources that was shown to the court. Elsewhere, differences between the oral evidence and statements given by the officers were also highlighted. With a Garda review now under way into the policing response to the protest and subsequent investigation, and after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar suggested evidence in the trial needs to be “examined”, a number of key disputed points will come under the spotlight. One of the most hotly contested pieces of evidence, and one which Paul Murphy TD has quoted in the Dail since his acquittal, was a garda allegation that he addressed the Jobstown crowd on a loudhailer, saying “will we let her go, or will we keep her here all night?” This was stated in evidence by Superintendent Daniel Flavin and two other gardai during the trial. Supt Flavin asserted that matters became more difficult after the TD asked the crowd would they “keep her there all night” because the response was “in effect, to keep her here”. He was crossexamined at length on this by Mr Murphy’s barrister, Sean Guerin SC, who said Supt Flavin’s recollection of what was said was “incomplete” and misleading. When the video was played back, Supt Flavin conceded there was “a lot more conversation”. Mr Guerin said Mr Murphy had been saying to the crowd that there were two options and one of them was “keeping her here”. He did not use the words “keep her here all