DAIL CRISIS: THINGS JUST GOT WORSE

Protected disclosure by a whistleblower sparked row Frances Fitzgerald DID read contentious email on Garda McCabe

THE Dáil crisis threatening a Christmas election deepened yesterday as new developments put Ministers Frances Fitzgerald and Charlie Flanagan front and centre in a tense game of political poker.

As Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin held crunch talks at Dublin’s Alexander Hotel, fresh

‘Unlikely irreconcilable positions will shift’

revelations threatened to stymie the little progress being made. The Mail on Sunday has learned:

The Department of Justice received a protected disclosure document in February this year from Garda HR chief John Barrett (whose information blew open the financial scandal at Templemore Garda College) which raised questions over what the department knew about the Garda legal strategy to undermine Maurice McCabe. The disclosure reveals that the strategy was told to Mr Barrett in April 2015.

The department confirmed their records show then-minister Fitzgerald did read the email, as her private secretary wrote that the minister had ‘noted’ the contents. Previously, she only said she assumed she read it. A department spokesman said: ‘The email was passed to the Tánaiste who is recorded as having noted its contents. There was no oral discussion or briefing with her about it.’

The Taoiseach told the Irish Mail on Sunday yesterday that Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan, despite being told about the email on November 13, did not see the contents until a full week later. A spokesman confirmed, he only asked to see it on November 20, almost a week after the Taoiseach had misled the Dáil twice, prompting the beginning of the current crisis and four days after Minister Fitzgerald was made aware of the email.

Department of Justice officials apparently did not recognise the significance of the email when they told Minister Flanagan. A Government spokesman said last night: ‘My understanding is that there was no indication made to the minister by the department that this email was any more significant than any of the other 230 documents that had been submitted to the tribunal’.

Labour TD Alan Kelly, whose Dáil questions asked about the same issue as was documented in the February protected disclosure, piled pressure on Mr Flanagan to ‘come out of hiding’ and tell the public about his role in this crisis. He also called for the minister to apologise for his ‘ridiculous’ outburst, where he accused Mr Kelly of an attempt to smear his name.

Yet another whistleblower has emerged at Garda HQ, showing continuing problems and divisions in the upper echelons of the force. A civilian official made a protected disclosure on May 22, alleging mistreatment by colleagues.

Fianna Fáil Justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan, said it ‘is unlikely that the irreconcilable positions between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will shift between now and say next Tuesday’. He said: ‘If that is the case the only way we can prevent a general election is for the Tánaiste to consider her position.’

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs went into panic mode throughout yesterday, urging their leaders to ‘get it sorted’.

A poll published last night, and taken this week, shows Fine Gael falling two points to 27%, and Fianna Fail increasing by one point. to 26%. Fine Gael TDs told the MoS they believe this shows the Justice controversy damages them. But Fianna Fáil TDs expressed concern Mr Martin had made a misstep.

The MoS can reveal that Garda Human Resources head John Barrett informed the Department of Justice this February that he had been informed in April 2015 by colleagues at Garda HQ that they were ‘going after McCabe’. He did it by means of a protected disclosure.

A source familiar with the disclosure said that ‘it went up to the Secretary General, it would have gone to Noel Waters’. The source said: ‘He [Barrett] recoiled from it straight away and said “are you mad?”. And from there on then he was pushed out of the strategy in relation to McCabe. He got annoyed over that plan.’ The source said the same disclosure was then passed on to the Charleton Disclosures Tribunal.

This will bring fresh focus on to the knowledge and actions of the department both in 2015 and again since February.

Ms Fitzgerald, who was justice minister in 2015, didn’t return phone calls yesterday as pressure mounted on her to fall on her sword to avoid an election.

At a doorstep yesterday, when asked about Mr Flanagan’s silence on the email, the Taoiseach told the MoS: ‘The situation was that Charlie Flanagan didn’t see the email until Monday either, so Charlie and I both saw the email for the first time on the Monday, Charlie was informed about it a week prior to that by his Secretary General, at the same time as the Sec Gen told him of his impending retirement, there was a document that had been found relating to McCabe, and Charlie acted appropriately and instructed the document be sent to the tribunal. he didn’t actually see it until the Monday which is why he didn’t alert me to it, which he would have immediately had he actually seen the document.’

But Mr Varadkar’s spokesman later clarified that Mr Flanagan hadn’t asked for the email, because the significance of it was not indicated to him by his department officials.

The Justice Minister was yester-

day accused of ‘hiding’ as further questions emerged.

Alan Kelly, the Labour TD who has done most to uncover the department’s knowledge of the controversial Garda strategy told the MoS: ‘I want to ask specifically why Charlie Flanagan is hiding. And why isn’t the Taoiseach asking him questions? When he found out about this email why did he sit beside the Taoiseach and not inform him on two occasions, which meant that the Taoiseach was accused of misleading the Dáil? Or that he didn’t give correct information to the Dáil. And why isn’t Leo Varadkar asking Charlie about that?

‘Charlie Flanagan accused me of a smear campaign, he never said it outside the Chamber. He needs to be asked to go on the record to apologise for that. Furthermore he needs to outline why he spoke in the manner in which he did on the 15th and give full explanations as to what he knew on that day. That generated his outburst, which was an attempt to try and shut me up.’

Meanwhile the Irish Mail on Sunday today publishes exclusive photographs of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Micheal Martin emerging from a meeting at the Alexander Hotel in central Dublin where they tried to avert a General Election.

A spokesman for the Government said of the meeting that was designed to stave off an election. ‘The Taoiseach met Micheál Martin today to discuss solutions that might prevent a general election. They discussed three broad areas: asking the Charleton Tribunal to inquire in January into the extent of the knowledge by Minister Fitzgerald and officials in the Department of Justice and whether they acted appropriately; ensuring that a better reform system is in place in the Department of Justice to ensure that the Toland reforms are being properly implemented; and ensuring that all Parliamentary Questions being asked are properly answered.’

IT SAYS a lot about the dynamics of modern politics that Governments can be toppled over a minor indiscretion – but survive intact in the pernicious aftermath of a monumental policy blunder.

In contrast to the water charges fiasco or the desultory approach to tackling homelessness, the charges against the Tánaiste are of scant consequence.

But in the absence of stable government, what may have been an oversight on her part has become a lightning rod for a wider Government malaise, namely the brittle and flawed confidence and supply agreement with Fianna Fáil.

The background to the case against Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald contains more stages than most of us might care to follow. Two years ago, when she was Justice Minister, she was sent an email outlining the then Garda Commissioner’s plan to aggressively pursue Sergeant McCabe at a tribunal.

But when she was asked about it recently she claimed not to remember it. It then took her three days to get the Attorney General’s opinion on the significance of the email, and, conveniently, that advice was that she could not have acted on it.

The delay in seeking advice was a mistake, as it escalated the crisis, but the greater error was her failure to seek advice in 2015, before Sergeant McCabe gave his testimony and when she had promised him the State’s full protection.

The Tánaiste’s ineptitude has caused the Taoiseach to mislead the Dáil twice and it leaves the current Justice Minister exposed. Charlie Flanagan was informed of the email recently and yet, it seems, he sat in silence as the Taoiseach misled the Dáil. The affair has stretched the shaky confidence and supply deal to breaking point.

A general election is the only realistic response to this miserable state of affairs. Confidence and supply has created a moribund Dáil, an irritable Fianna Fáil and a lame opposition, so strangled and threadbare that the country has been treated, in recent days, to the absurd spectacle of Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald in the role of conscience of the nation.

Voters won’t thank politicians for an election in the busy run-up to Christmas. The polls show gains for the two larger parties, slightly more for Fianna Fáil. The protest vote that annihilated Fianna Fáil in 2007 and crippled Fine Gael last year seems to be abating, robbing independents of their position as kingmakers. The configuration of the next government may be historic. Sinn Féin, led by Mary Lou McDonald, may enter government.

An election may be undesirable at this time of tense Brexit negotiations when the spectre of a hard border threatens to unravel the peace process and much of the economic activity that underpins it.

But compared to a weak Government, a badly timed election is the lesser of two evils. Leo Varadkar is an able party leader but he is not an elected Taoiseach.

If there is an election, let the country give a clear mandate to whoever is best fit to fight our corner in the economic and political contests that lie ahead with Brexit and make our voice ring strong in Europe for now and generations to come.