Garda coterie out to get McCabe must be exposed
IHAVE never met or spoken to Sergeant Maurice McCabe or even tried to contact him through a third party. ‘Can anybody be that good?’ a sceptical friend asked rhetorically about the garda some regard as a secular saint. Apparently Leo Varadkar believes he is not only ‘that good’ but felt it was his duty to confront fellow minister Alan Shatter by publicly supporting Sgt McCabe.
It took great faith in his judgment of McCabe’s character for Varadkar to face down the then minister for justice and Garda commissioner.
It was a leap of faith that led to calamitous career endings for Mr Shatter and Mr Callinan.
The former chief executive of the Road Transport Authority has also confirmed details of the Garda’s determination to prosecute Sgt McCabe under data protection laws.
Noel Brett, who is serving on the Policing Authority, knows how vile the rumours were about McCabe, and who was spreading them.
Gardaí quashing penalty points cannot be condoned but no one should be surprised that it happened. Other public servants in positions of influence do favours for their friends and colleagues.
But the mismanagement that ended up with the murder of a woman and other shoddy practices had to be confronted.
Sgt McCabe is now famous for highlighting incompetence and worse in the Garda, although there is no evidence he ever courted celebrity.
A High Court judge has declared him to be an honourable man with no personal agenda motivating any of the claims he made.
And I believe that he is a honest man, an exemplary member of An Garda Síochána, an admirable role model for younger colleagues.
He is a totem of courage and decency in the rural community where he lives with his family. Yet McCabe has been accused of very serious crimes. Vile rumours were peddled to politicians and journalists when Sgt McCabe made his allegations against the gardaí.
The evidence available suggests some senior members of the Garda are involved in the smear campaign.
Gardaí are worldclass investigators equipped with formidable forensic skills to hunt down serious criminals. The successful prosecution of Graham Dwyer for the murder of Elaine O’Hara last year was a masterclass in criminal detection.
SO IF Sgt McCabe were guilty of any criminal act, a breach of the Garda disciplinary code or minor road traffic laws, I bet he would have been nailed. Yet the snide innuendo and vile rumours continue with a sinister subtext of ‘no smoke without fire’. The plot to bring down the whistleblower could have been resurrected from the archives of some Cold War commissar.
For many years I reported from abroad, from the sort of places where a chief of police would arrange a secret meeting with a powerful politician with a view to subvert a witness’s credibility. Last week I wrote about how the former Garda commissioner met secretly with the chairman of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee in a car park to raise doubts about Sgt Maurice McCabe’s character and credibility.
Was this the former Garda commissioner’s only secret mission to undermine McCabe’s credibility? Did he share details of his mission, and the reason for it, with other senior members of the Garda?
It is all the more appalling a vista considering that the Garda have been an unqualified triumph since they were set up in 1922 to cradle a fledgling State and watch it mature to a robust democracy.
Members of the Garda have given their lives and faced down murderous terrorism with courage and resolve. Their honesty and diligence have been a shining example for the police services of other countries, including Britain and the US.
It was against this background, and opinion polls that show Irish citizens trust their police service more than nearly every comparable country, that Sgt McCabe spoke out about the Garda’s failures.
He was not seeking a public scandal, just a fair hearing from his superiors. But rather than listen to his message, they have tried to destroy the messenger.
The scandal that followed terrifies politicians, both in the government and opposition.
Fine Gael pays lip service praising McCabe although some of TDs are still suspicious of him. Other politicians in Fianna Fáil, some independents and a few in other parties are afraid that rounding on McCabe’s accusers will submerge the Garda in a quagmire of scandal.
POLITICIANS fear that the scandal could ignite a constitutional crisis that will damage Garda morale for decades and maybe even bring down the Government. But Michael D’Arcy, Fine Gael TD in north Wexford, has broken ranks and told his party colleagues he has no confidence in Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan. And D’Arcy also attacked her decision to promote her husband to chief superintendent with four new assistant commissioners before the new Independent Policing Authority takes charge.
Maybe someone in authority should flick through an old Latin legal textbook and stop at ‘Fiat justitia ruat caelum’ – it means ‘Let justice be done though the heavens fall’. In other words, the politicians should do their duty whatever the consequences.
An Garda Síochána is bigger and better than the small coterie of delinquents apparently out to destroy McCabe.
And the men and women who provide our police service – and the citizens who empower them – deserve better.