Politics

New questions emerge about events leading to Government action on Garda tapes

Commissioner’s letter of March 10th did not reach Taoiseach until after Mr Callinan resigned

Acting Garda Commissioner Noirín O’Sullivan leaves the Garda training college in Templemore, Co Tipperary, yesterday after meeting senior gardaí. Photograph: Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland
Arthur Beesley's picture
Arthur Beesley
Tue Apr 01 2014 - 22:28

Fresh questions are emerging about the chain of events which led the Government to establish a Commission of Inquiry into the covert bugging of phone calls at Garda stations.

At issue now are heated discussions within Government Buildings last Monday week as Taoiseach Enda Kenny and a select group of top officials grappled with the emergent problem.

Also in the frame is the high level of activity on matters linked to the recordings within the Department of Justice and other agencies of State, which continued for weeks without anyone apparently telling Minister Alan Shatter.

Crucial here is a letter about the phone recordings on March 10th from then Garda commissioner Martin Callinan to the Department's secretary general Brian Purcell.

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Mr Purcell is a pivotal figure in the affair because Mr Kenny sent him to Mr Callinan’s home on Monday March 24th to tell him of the gravity with which the Cabinet viewed the disclosures.

This came at the end of a day of intensive talks in Government Buildings in which Mr Purcell was a participant alongside Mr Kenny, Attorney General Máire Whelan, Government secretary general Martin Fraser and an unnamed senior barrister.

Although the urgency of the situation was clear, the Government spokesman said Mr Purcell did not alert the Taoiseach to Mr Callinan’s letter at that time.

Mr Kenny learned of it only on the Tuesday, the day after he sent Mr Purcell to speak with Mr Callinan; hours after the commissioner resigned and after the Cabinet’s decision to seek an inquiry.

Given the sensitivity of the issues under discussion, should the Taoiseach have been told of the letter on Monday?

“I think that would have been a reasonable expectation,” said the Government spokesman.

He declined to elaborate, saying the focus is on the substance of the matter and not the questions surrounding who knew what and when.

The Taoiseach learned of the letter from Mr Shatter, who was shown it only at 12.40pm on Tuesday. This was 16 days after it was received in Mr Purcell’s office – and Mr Callinan had stated in the first line that he wished to bring the matter to the Minister’s attention.

This is at the heart of the Opposition’s attack on Mr Shatter. As the Government goes about its defence of the Minister against Fianna Fáil’s no-confidence motion, the Department of Justice fleshed out the sequence of events in a six-page report by Mr Purcell.

This places the affair in the context of a wrongful-arrest action against the State by Ian Bailey which arises from the 1996 murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

Although Mr Callinan established a Garda working group to deal with the recordings last November, Mr Purcell said the first time the department had an appreciation of the nature of “explosive” recordings linked to the Bailey case “and knowledge of their contents” was on February 28th.

On the same day that the commissioner’s letter of March 10th was sent, the report discloses that the department of Justice, alongside the Office of the Attorney General and the Chief State Solicitor’s office, attended a meeting on the Bailey case at Garda headquarters which was chaired by Mr Callinan.

Although there was a follow-up meeting the next day, Mr Purcell’s report said the emphasis then was on the Bailey case and not on the “systemic” question of generalised recordings in Garda stations.

He went on to say “there was little discussion of that issue and certainly not in any red-flag manner”.

There were discussions in the Department in the context of the Bailey case from March 10th, which was a busy period for Mr Shatter.

He left for Mexico on Saturday March 15th, returning on Friday March 21st.

The Garda copied the department with correspondence involving the AG’s office and the Chief State Solicitor’s office on Wednesday March 19th and the department received further legal correspondence on Monday March 24th.

Due to a family bereavement, Mr Purcell was away from the office from March 15th until the 24th.

He briefed Mr Shatter that evening. “Subsequently the Minister, and then the secretary general, was called over to the office of An Taoiseach to discuss the matters at hand.”