The Garda scene commander at the Abbeylara siege denied yesterday at the Barr tribunal that he ceded control of the situation to the Emergency Response Unit.
Supt Joseph Shelly was cross-examined at the resumption of the tribunal which is investigating the circumstances into the fatal shooting of John Carthy in Abbeylara, Co Longford, in April 2000.
Mr Michael O'Higgins SC, for the Carthy family, put it to Supt Shelly that the way he approached the situation and his leadership style was that this was a specialist operation and the Emergency Response Unit (ERU) knew what it was doing. "You didn't have a clue and you sat back and let them get on with it."
Supt Shelly replied: "I totally reject that." Asked if he did not cede control of the operation, he responded: "I don't think in all my 32 years in the Garda Síochána I was ever accused of that before."
Mr O'Higgins suggested that Supt Shelly failed to get tactical advice on what would happen if John Carthy left the house and this meant he ceded total control to the ERU.
"I hadn't ceded control to anybody. I listened to what they were saying and everything was done by agreement," Supt Shelly said.
Mr O'Higgins put it to him that there were certain departures from what he was taught in training and what actually happened at Abbeylara, including not setting up a negotiating cell, not following up on contacts for information and failure to keep logs.
Supt Shelly said he decided to adapt what he learned in training to the Abbeylara situation. "I'm quite happy with the measures put in place at the scene and it worked quite well. I understood and still do that you deal with a situation as you find it. The circumstances of every situation are very different. I felt the measures I put in place and followed by my colleagues were correct."
Mr O'Higgins said he had departed very radically from his training. Supt Shelly rejected this.
Mr O'Higgins put it to him that as he received training in 1991/92 and a refresher in 1997, he was rusty on these very complex issues.
Supt Shelly replied: "I followed the training and knowledge I had. I knew what we were dealing with. I'm happy I dealt with it in the correct way. If you're saying that I didn't know what to do, I reject that."