Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have taken the trouble of reading this report. It is 301 pages, including the afterword. I draw the Minister's attention to the afterword on page 301 which states:

What has been unnerving about more than 100 days of hearings in this tribunal is that a person who stood up for better standards in our national police force, Sergeant Maurice McCabe, and who exemplified hard work in his own calling, was repulsively denigrated for being no more than a good citizen and police office...The question has to be asked as to why what is best, what demands hard work, is not the calling of every single person...Worse still is the question of how it is that decent people of whom Maurice McCabe emerges as a paradigm are so shamefully treated when rightly they demand that we do better.

I remind the Minister an allegation was made in 2006 without foundation. The DPP saw no reason to prosecute and made that clear. Sergeant McCabe had to endure that false allegation. After 2008, he thought it had gone to bed. It was resurrected in December 2015 and into 2016. It had changed into an allegation of digital rape. Let us just listen to that. In eight years an allegation for which the DPP said there were no grounds for prosecution changes to an allegation of rape.

Unfortunately, Deputy Fitzgerald has left the Chamber but she might look back and read my contribution in the Official Report. I came here two and a half years ago and my first introduction to the Dáil was reading the report of the O'Higgins' commission of investigation relating to Maurice McCabe. It was an absolute eye opener. It was not heeded and here I am two and a half years later reading the report of the Charleton tribunal. The background, as the Ministers who are present in the Chamber, Deputies Flanagan, Zappone and Madigan, know, is we have the Morris tribunal. The latest estimated cost of that is €72 million and rising. Each Government decided it was confined to Donegal and there was no problem anywhere else. This tribunal, Mr. Justice Charleton tells us, is about holding the police force to account. The Morris tribunal was about the same thing. The commission of investigation conducted by Mr. Justice Kevin O'Higgins was about the same thing. I might add that the Toland report on the Department of Justice and Equality and the recommendations made in it were not heeded either. Had any of these been heeded, we would not be here today. It is important to remember that Sergeant McCabe and his family are in the middle of this.

I refer to pages 296 and 297 of the report. We have now gone through all of these tribunals, ending with the disclosures tribunal, to highlight the seven obligations on gardaí. Imagine it takes a tribunal to tell us gardaí should take pride in their uniform. The second obligation is for them to be honest. The third obligation is for them to be visible. Perhaps by the time I finish talking, the Minister might be able to tell me what it has cost us in money and in absolute distress and destruction to family life to learn these seven principles. They are honesty, pride, visibility, politeness. The fourth obligation is that gardaí should be polite. Number five is they should serve the people of Ireland. Diligence and application to duty are expected of all, not moaning. The sixth obligation is to treat the public well and to treat the public as superior to any false sense that individual policemen and policewomen should stick up for each other. The seventh is self-analysis. Those seven principles should not have cost what they did. Those seven principles should apply to each and every one of us in the Dáil. If those seven principles had been taken seriously by the Dáil, we would not have had the Charleton tribunal. Even now the former Minister, Deputy Fitzgerald, is picking certain parts out - I understand where she is coming from in terms of her position - but there is much more serious content in this report that should be referred to by any Minister standing up in the Dáil.

What came out of this? We have a Garda force that has an utter inability to self-analyse and learn from its mistakes and that is crying out for leadership. The report tells us the former Commissioner was not believable on certain evidence set out. That is who was leading the Garda force. It quite rightly praises many gardaí on the ground and identifies those who are honest. However, the report's findings regarding the former Commissioner are absolutely shocking.

With regard to what it found on Tusla, I have a certain empathy and sympathy with the Minister, Deputy Zappone, on how she will deal with those damning findings. They are truly damning findings of a genuine mistake, which is difficult to understand, on the part of the counsellor. When she did find out, she did her absolute damnedest to correct the mistake. In 2016, Sergeant McCabe and his wife got a letter accusing him of digital and anal rape even though the counsellor had corrected the file in 2014. It is quite clear from this report that just about everyone who mattered in Tusla knew this was wrong and everyone who mattered at the senior level in the Garda Síochána knew. It is set out that a person - I forget his rank but it was quite high - knew but delayed and did not tell those in the upper echelons in Dublin that this was a false allegation. I will go through it.

The words are damning. Page 72 refers to Tusla, which is a name I cannot get my tongue around because it is an abuse of language. It is supposed to be mean "the start of a new day" but it is not spelled right. It might give an indication as to what happened with that organisation because "tús lá" or "tús lae" becomes "Tusla".

When the matter of the file is followed up again inexplicably, Mr. Justice Charleton states:

The tribunal cannot identify the mind [I would have preferred if he had said "the person"] behind the decision to revive the matter at that point but the tribunal regards the explanation of mere coincidence as wholly unconvincing. As to whether it was either Laura Connolly or Eileen Argue or someone directing either of them, there is insufficient evidence to make a decision. The reality is that someone within TUSLA realised that they had what they perceived to be unfinished business with Maurice McCabe and decided that for the avoidance of trouble, the business should [...] be dealt with. This was not, as was related to the tribunal, a coincidence. It is very disappointing [I would say "unacceptable"] that the tribunal could not have been told by TUSLA what [...] happened.

A file was subsequently sent to the regional unit in Dublin which, Mr. Justice Charleton writes, was "filleted". By the time it came before the tribunal, it had returned to its full contents. Will the Minister explain that?

On page 74, Mr. Justice Charleton states that the error is:

shocking administrative incompetence. Reviewing this account of error upon error, of not attending to duty upon not attending to duty, of not abiding by guidelines and of reporting the same matter multiple times to the police, when the police had in fact originally referred the matter to social services, the tribunal is left utterly dispirited.

I would not use the word "dispirited" but that is the word he uses.

Elsewhere, he writes that he does not accept that the former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan's evidence is trustworthy. He mentions "hideous [...] bizarre coincidences". I would not use that language but I think he is taking the best interpretation. Having read the whole report, I find it impossible not to conclude it was somewhat more sinister than what he described, although that just is my personal opinion. He has explained what happened as "hideous [...] bizarre coincidences". He also writes about "a change of culture" and the principles I have outlined.

Behind all of this, if Sergeant McCabe had not persisted with his family's support, if he had not taken the precaution of making a recording, if my colleagues who are not present had not spoken out, namely, Deputies Clare Daly, Wallace, McGuinness and Deasy, or if not for the Committee of Public Accounts, this would not have come to light. That is shocking. When I hear Deputy Fitzgerald use her time to defend herself, it is disappointing. The time should be used to realise what he wrote, such as: "Ní féidir an dubh a chur ina gheal, ach seal. [One can only deceive for so long.]" If the right questions are put, we are halfway to getting the replies. This was unnecessary but the deception will continue unless there is leadership from the top and from the Dáil, not by taking the matter personally but by saying it is a problem, we welcome the questions and we will endeavour to provide answers. We would have much fewer tribunals and commissions of inquiry.

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