The widow of a Garda sergeant burned to death in Tallaght station, Co Dublin, has taken a High Court case for compensation. Mrs Yvonne Callanan has taken the proceedings against the State under the Garda Compensation Acts.
Chief Supt Noel Smith told Mr Justice O'Sullivan yesterday that the late Sgt Andrew Callanan's career prospects had been first-class. Mr Callanan was promoted to sergeant at the age of 30 and had passed his inspector's exams at the time of his death.
Supt Smith said Sgt Callanan was an extremely fine man, who was well liked by his colleagues and the public. He was not afraid of responsibility.
Sgt Callanan was pronounced dead in Tallaght General Hospital at 5.31 a.m. on July 21st, 1999. It is alleged that just over an hour earlier a man had entered Tallaght station carrying a plastic container of highly inflammable liquid and approached a young garda on duty.
There was a huge conflagration in the reception area, and it is alleged that Sgt Callanan, who had a fire extinguisher, became engulfed in the flames. Criminal proceedings have been instituted in relation to the incident.
During yesterday's hearing Mr Justice O'Sullivan described it as a very sad case. Mrs Callanan said she was the mother of a six-year-old son and twin girls aged three. She had found the circumstances of her husband's death extremely distressing. They had married in 1986 and, until her husband's death, she had worked full-time as a cashier.
Asked by her counsel, Mr Harry Whelehan SC, if "quite distasteful newspaper accounts" of the death of her husband had added to her distress, she said such reports had upset her even more.
Dr Maureen Gaffney, a psychologist, said Sgt Callanan's death meant the loss of the primary attachment figure for both Mrs Callanan and her children. The loss of such a figure was regarded as an extremely adverse event for a whole variety of psychological and health reasons.
If a person lost such a figure in sudden, unexpected and traumatic circumstances the effect was even worse. Research had shown that unresolved feelings about it, if occurring in the circumstances outlined, could be frightening, and somewhat akin to post-traumatic distress. She could not imagine anything more nightmarish for a child, particularly for the sergeant's son, than the image of his father going up in flames.
Dr Gaffney said it would be particularly difficult for a single parent to look after three young children, particularly when two of them were the same age.
The court was told that the direct financial loss which Mrs Callanan would incur as a result of her husband's death had already been agreed at £635,000, while special damages of £9,900 were also agreed.
The hearing resumes today.