Sgt Maurice McCabe outside the Disclosures Tribunal this summer
This morning.
Further to questions being asked about what former Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald and the Department of Justice knew of the legal strategy used by the former Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan and several gardai in the O’Higgins Commission of Investigation in 2015 – in which allegations made by Ms O’Sullivan’s legal counsel were dropped after Sgt McCabe proved them to be false…
And reports of a phone call from Ms O’Sullivan to the then acting Secretary General at the Department of Justice Noel Waters on May 15, 2015 – the same date Sgt McCabe first gave evidence at the O’Higgins Commission which delivered the first blow to Ms O’Sullivan’s legal strategy…
And how within hours of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar saying on Tuesday, during Leaders’ Questions, that he could not be sure if there was such a call or not, Mr Waters announced he’ll be stepping down in February as he is approaching 40 years of service…
And Mr Varadkar saying yesterday that “it’s very hard to answer questions for third parties, or unnamed third parties” but admitted he hasn’t spoken with Mr Waters directly…
Niall O’Connor, on Independent.ie, reports:
Garda Headquarters has directed officers of all ranks to scrutinise their personal email accounts, handwritten notes and laptops for any material relating to Garda whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe.
In an unprecedented move, an assistant commissioner has been appointed to oversee the collation of potentially reams of electronic and written data from gardaí that will then be forwarded to the Disclosures Tribunal.
In a memo sent to all Garda divisions, seen by the Irish Independent, Garda management laid down the diktat ahead of the next phase of the tribunal, which is examining an alleged smear campaign against Sgt McCabe.
The blanket search even includes emails sent from officers’ own personal Gmail accounts.
…The news of the major fishing expedition is believed to stem from previous criticism levelled at management by whistleblower Keith Harrison.
…Gda Harrison is taking separate High Court action against the Garda Commissioner for breaching a court order.
Former commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan was accused of failing to fulfil an order to furnish Gda Harrison with the full Garda file in relation to a personal injury claim.
Acting Garda Commissioner Dónall Ó Cualáin may be forced to appear in court to defend the claim.
Gardaí must hand over all personal emails and notes about McCabe (Independent.ie)
Previously: The Legal Strategy Against Maurice McCabe
Rollingnews
Directive from Garda headquarters – ‘SKETCH’
delete delete delete. they should hire kevin o’connell to assist
“Garda Headquarters has directed officers of all ranks to scrutinise their personal email accounts, handwritten notes and laptops for any material relating to Garda whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe.”
Oh spare us, please.
Great stuff… telling individuals to scrutinise their own email accounts. you couldn’t make it up.
i dont know how McCabe has gotten through all of this. thank fupp he had recordings.. utterly corrupt. disgusting in fact.
so what would you suggest? That officers of all ranks should provide their personal email account details (including passwords) to some 3rd party who can trawl through ALL of it?
If the Gardaí were investigating XXX, who works in your large company (and you may never have met XXX) [or perhaps some other group you’re involved with that contains thousands of people if you don’t work in a large organisation], and they asked you for your personal email address(es) and passwords – so they could look through it to see if XXX was mentioned – would you provide it to them? Because no judge would give them a search warrant to do that. I wouldn’t give them my (personal account) passwords.
I agree that McCabe has been royally fupped over, there are limits to what can be done to investigate it.
Well then don’t bother with this utter silliness – it’s an insult to McCabe and to us.
What’s next? An appeal for all thieves and burglars who may have been operational in the last 40 years to examine their memories and pass on any incriminating information to the Gardai?
If an email address is used to by a Garda to discuss a case with other Gardai, then that email address can no longer be deemed personal. The problem will be that hotmail, gmail, etc email ‘accounts’ are disposable. Same as the sim cards from mobile phones. And we know that even top ranking Gardai tend to lose those.
Oh would you ever just fupp off Cian?
FFS
If private email addresses were tolerated as being used for official business, then yes they should be scrutinised by someone else.
Shur Hillary could use the same excuse..it’s me personal email, you can’t be looking at that.. it doesn’t work that way Cian. & having gardai scrutinise their own emails makes them a laughing stock.
What do you think will happen? ‘ I scrutinised me emails boys & I found an email where I orchestrated some of the smearing, whoopys, here ye go.. my bad. ‘
This is an exercise in appearing to do the right thing, when in reality it’s a joke.
What I think is remarkable Anne is that there is not even any semblance of an attempt to pretend otherwise. These boyos are literally accountable to no-one.
Lucia o Farrell is still waiting, now facing 7 years, ( dear god) for GSOC report into the awful hit and run death of her son Shane.
All the senior officers involved in Maurice Mc Cabe debacle are one and the same in tragic Lucia’s case.