Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not know whether the Minister is innocently supporting her in this case; I do not know how much he knows. The Minister for Justice and Equality knows plenty about what I have just said.

Does the Minister think it is appropriate for former Commissioner Callinan to have been in Phoenix Park headquarters on several days last week? Does he think it is appropriate that the former Commissioner and the present Commissioner would have access to the whole apparatus of An Garda Síochána, a pleasure that will not be afforded to Sergeant Maurice McCabe and Superintendent David Taylor?

She has set up a team, a serious team, including Detective Superintendent Tony Howard, and the Minister for Justice and Equality has been written to about reservations about that individual. She has brought back retired Assistant Commissioner Mick O'Sullivan and former Chief Superintendent Brendan Mangan. The Minister should ask the Commissioner whether she consulted John Barrett at human resources before she made appointments to her special unit to deal with the Charleton inquiry. John Barrett wrote a letter to the head of legal affairs, Ken Ruane, pointing out the corporate risk to An Garda Síochána in setting up this unit, staffed with personal friends and associates. He suggested a firm of outside solicitors should be brought in to act as a conduit between An Garda Síochána and the Charleton inquiry, but he was ignored.

She is a law unto herself. Does the Minister know why? It is because the Government let her be so. She will remain a law unto herself and the Garda Síochána force is secondary to her interests and concerns. The Government is allowing it to happen. The Government will eventually get rid of her but it will be too late and too much damage will be done.

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