On the morning after the murder of Veronica Guerin on June 26th, 1996, John Bruton, then Taoiseach, spoke in the Dáil during the Order of Business. He said: "The full resources of the State are being applied to finding and bringing to justice those who committed this murder and those who inspired and directed it."
That promise rings fairly pathetically now. The full resources of the State have resulted in just a single person, Brian Meehan, being in jail for her murder, and that person has a realistic chance of having his conviction overturned on appeal. It isn't just that two others, the supposed gang leader, John Gilligan, and a supposed accomplice, Paul Ward, have been acquitted of murder; it is that the investigation has proved so ineffectual.
In what was billed as the most extensive investigation conducted by the Irish police force, involving hundreds of gardaí and massive resources, they found hardly a morsel of conventional evidence. Yes, there were the supposed admissions by Paul Ward and the highly suspect evidence of two supergrasses, Charles Bowden and Russell Warren, both of whom were offered substantial inducements to swear up. But evidence of the kind we expect a professional police force to uncover? Apart from a few phone logs, nothing.
It seems not to matter to the political establishment. Still less does it seem to matter that a court has found in at least one of these cases that the gardaí engaged in very curious behaviour and that the high-level Garda investigation into that behaviour, as usual, uncovered nothing.
The behaviour I am referring to concerns the alleged admissions by Paul Ward. These were made to two detectives late on October 17th, 1996. They represented (or would have if true) the first real breakthrough in the massive investigation. Amazingly, two separate teams of detectives who interrogated Ward the following morning were entirely unaware of the breakthrough. It was only later that day that detectives at the hub of the investigation became aware of the sensational "developments".
The Special Criminal Court was dubious about this, so much so that it decided not to admit the "evidence" of these admissions. The presiding judge, Mr Justice Barr, observed that what happened "indicates either incredible disorganisation in the murder investigation, despite the fact there was a continuously manned incident room at Lucan Garda station or there was no memorandum of the interview at the time and it came into existence later". In evidence during the Ward trial the officers who interrogated him on the night of October 17th said the memorandum was done contemporaneous with the interview.
Following the case, the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, arranged for an inquiry into these and other issues arising out of the case, to be conducted by Michael J. Carty, then chief superintendent, now Assistant Commissioner. Although the Garda refused to publish the report, a copy has become available to me and a few other journalists.
The report notes that Ward was interviewed by various Garda personnel while in custody. Then, amazingly, it claims: "In the course of three such interviews Mr Ward made incriminating verbal admissions relative to his involvement in the murder of Ms Veronica Guerin". These allegedly were made on the evening of October 17th, between 7.35 p.m. and 11.25 p.m. and again the following morning in an interview between 10.55 a.m. and 12.45 p.m. and in a further interview between 1.52 p.m. and 2.30 p.m. All these admissions were recorded, it claims, in question-and-answer format. If this is true, how could it be that in the judgment of the Special Criminal Court there is reference to only one of these alleged admissions? If no evidence was given of the two additional admissions, why? On these curiosities, the report is silent.
On the question of why the detectives who interrogated Ward on the morning of October 18th were not aware of the "breakthrough" of the previous evening, the report explains: Following the late-night interrogation of October 17th, at which the "admissions" were made, one of the gardaí simply went off on his own, taking with him the document with the questions and answers. The other garda informed the head of the investigation, Assistant Commissioner Tony Hickey and another detective. The report says Tony Hickey informed the head of the incident centre, Det Insp J. O'Connell, the following morning, but still the two teams of detectives that later questioned Ward were not told. The report comments lamely: "It would appear that there was no formal system in place to update the interrogation teams of the progress in the investigation."
It claimed that had Assistant Commissioner Hickey been called to give evidence the court would have been less critical of the gardaí. No explanation is offered as to why Hickey was not called. The report concluded: "This investigation has uncovered no evidence that would suggest or indicate that the investigating gardaí engaged in any unprofessional behaviour or orchestrated ploys to obtain evidence to assist in the conviction of the accused." And that's it.
To paraphrase the Special Criminal Court: either this is not believable or the conduct of the investigation was chaotic. The report merely adds to apprehension over what was going on or is going on. Maybe Nuala O'Loan should be asked to inquire.