Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have read the report. I would like to have an hour to make my contribution but I have only a few minutes. On 8 June, Mr. Justice Peter Charleton said "I know that an awful lot of people haven't been telling me the truth". I welcome Mr. Justice Charleton’s report. He had a very difficult job. He said it was a dreadful struggle, but he has done incredibly well.

We attended more than 25 of the 102 days of the tribunal hearings. Chris Noonan, my parliamentary assistant, attended most days. At times, it was a depressing experience. It was hard to listen to public servants, in some cases retired Secretaries General, and Garda Commissioners, take the stand and be so economical with the truth.

I have no intention of being critical of Mr. Justice Charleton’s report. It is excellent. While he was merciless in much of his report, and rightly so - he certainly did not spare Tusla or the Garda Síochána organisation - there were times when I thought his kind nature got the better of him.

With any tribunal or commission of investigation, before one looks at the final report, one must look at the terms of reference and analyse how these may confine what the judge can examine. Aside from being limited by the terms of reference, things were made immensely more difficult for him on this occasion due to the fact that so many people refused to tell the truth.

Former press officer David Taylor was not spared, and rightly so. Mr. Justice Charleton is someone we have come to admire very much, and one of his more admirable features is his intolerance for those blatantly lying to him. David Taylor was one of them.

Both I and Deputy Clare Daly met David Taylor in his living room shortly after he made his protected disclosure. Just why he decided to go into the tribunal and give a different version of events from that which he had given us is beyond us. It was a serious mistake on his part, and he has paid a high price for it.

When the former Secretary General of the Department of Justice and Equality, Noel Waters, stated that he could not remember a 14 minute phone call between himself and Nóirín O'Sullivan during the O'Higgins commission, Mr. Justice Charleton referred to it as improbable. It was more than improbable.

Mr. Justice Charleton lambasted David Taylor with his ridiculous excuses regarding the two phones he did not cough up, so to speak. I would have liked him to grill Nóirín O'Sullivan about the five phones she refused to cough up.

Maurice McCabe requested a tribunal so that events would be examined in public rather than in private. He was right to do so. Mr. Justice Cooke is investigating NAMA’s sale of Project Eagle. I can only imagine the lies he is being told. Obviously, Mr. Justice Charleton was told buckets of lies too, but it was in public, and the difference is that the public got the opportunity to see it. The Charleton tribunal has lifted the lid on how the establishment has no problem with lying.

He has been slightly written out of history but people forget that Mr. Justice Iarfhlaith O'Neill was originally tasked with examining the disclosures of David Taylor and Maurice McCabe. He recommended that a commission of investigation be set up and drafted the terms of reference, the majority of which were used by the tribunal. The ones he did not draft caused the most trouble, in particular, term of reference (e), which tasked Mr. Justice Charleton with examining the O’Higgins commission and whether false allegations of sexual abuse or any other unjustified grounds were inappropriately relied upon by Nóirín O'Sullivan to discredit Sergeant McCabe. That was too narrow, and it did not allow Mr. Justice Charleton to examine some of the other critical issues that played out during the O'Higgins commission. He was only allowed assess Nóirín O'Sullivan's role in regard to the O’Higgins commission, specifically whether she used a false allegation of rape to discredit Maurice. We never alleged that or believed Nóirín O'Sullivan to be guilty of it. We did allege many other things, and with good reason.

The famous letter of 18 May handed to the commission setting out the motivations of Maurice McCabe has fallen through the cracks.

Mr. Justice Charleton said it was accurate to a point and then it went off the rails. It is much worse than that; it is a pure work of fiction.

In respect of the letter of 18 May, Mr. Justice Charleton found that there was no deliberate attempt to write a series of quite silly mistakes by way of a submission undermining Maurice McCabe to the O’Higgins commission. I beg to differ. If mistakes were made and accepted, why did they always go against Maurice McCabe? If Chief Superintendent Rooney and Superintendent Cunningham had nothing to hide with regard to their input into the letter, why did they claim privilege in respect of it when they were before the tribunal?

With regard to the role of Nóirín O'Sullivan in the smear campaign, Mr. Justice Charleton found that she had no role in it, but also found that it was improbable that she did not know it was happening. I would have liked him to build on that finding. A deputy commissioner of An Garda Síochána has a duty of care to all of its officers, and Nóirín O'Sullivan knew what Commissioner Callinan was doing, yet she failed to act.

As I said, there was much that Mr. Justice Charleton could not comment on due to the terms of reference, and that is a pity. There has been a rewriting of history by both the media and the political establishment with regard to the story of Garda malpractice and how the issues came to light. This Chamber was a lonely place in 2012 and 2013 when we were highlighting the penalty points issues and other Garda wrongdoings.

Mr. Justice Charleton referred to the O’Mahoney report and stated that the report found no evidence of crime, corruption, deception or falsification. Obviously, he could not make findings on that report. Although it is now completely discredited, when the report was published, it was heralded. The former Minister for Justice and Equality, Alan Shatter, went onto the plinth of Leinster House and abused the whistleblowers, and Martin Callinan told the Oireachtas committee that Assistant Commissioner O'Mahoney's report was credible and factually correct and that it was based on fact. That is not true. Those lines were accepted by the media at the time without any scrutiny and our protestations were rubbished.

Mr. Justice Charleton also touched upon a letter Chief Superintendent Rooney passed around to local gardaí in the Cavan-Monaghan division in 2011, congratulating everyone involved in the Byrne-McGinn inquiry on their good work. Chief Superintendent Rooney apologised for this letter at the tribunal and Mr. Justice Charleton stated that the apology was belated. It was more than belated; it was a disgrace of a letter.

On the media, the Charleton report stated that the tribunal had the greatest difficulty in getting any information from journalists and that journalistic privilege has two parts, the entitlement to assert it and the right of society to override it in the interest of a pressing national concern. I have not noticed many journalists quoting Mr. Justice Charleton on that. In terms of the media coverage of the events at Dublin Castle, Olga Cronin from broadsheet.ie, Sean Murray of thejournal.ie, and Mick Clifford deserve to be singled out for praise. Some of what was written would certainly have prevented Mr. Justice Charleton from enjoying his breakfast if he had the misfortune to have read it.

In his conclusion, Mr. Justice Charleton states that a tribunal, having completed its work, might hope that thereby some improvement could occur. He states that a tribunal should speak freely and should in no way be trapped by the temptation of cynicism that nothing may change. I believe that this tribunal was worthwhile. I believe things will change for the better. Mr. Justice Peter Charleton has done the State a great service, unlike so many who went up to Dublin Castle to tell him lies.

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