Former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan and PULSE records showing his penalty points for speeding terminated
Readers may recall how Justice Nial Fennelly noted in his report how former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan had asked a superintendent to dispose of 8 to 10 black bags of papers hours after he had stepped down, on March 25, 2014.
The papers were later shredded on April 14, 2014, according to evidence given to Fennelly.
As Callinan couldn’t locate his diary for 2013, the Fennelly Commission concluded it must also have been shredded.
Readers will also recall how Fennelly found that when they asked Callinan about his official phone, he said he didn’t know where it was. The Fennelly Commission made further enquiries and Fennelly was told by Assistant Commissioner Jack Nolan that the phone had been given to the gardaí, that the SIM had been removed and the phone had been returned to Callinan. Nolan told Fennelly it was his understanding the SIM had been destroyed.
Later Fennelly asked Callinan to look for the phone. In turn, Callinan looked for the phone, found it and gave it to the Commission. It had no SIM card. Subsequent to this, Nolan told the Commission that the SIM card actually hadn’t been returned by Callinan and that it had been cancelled remotely on May 30, 2014 as it hadn’t been used since April 16, 2014.
Further to this, John Mooney, in yesterday’s Sunday Times, made reference to Callinan and the shredding of his papers and diary.
He wrote:
“Fennelly made no adverse finding against Callinan, and did not accuse him or Garda Headquarters of destroying evidence, but it did make references to the various controversies which had beset the commissioner between late 2012 and early 2014. Callinan is likely to have sent texts and made entries into his 2013 diary about these events.”
“In 2013, for example, the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) sent a file to the Department of Justice on Operation Castle, an investigation into collusion between the international drugs trafficker Kieran Boylan and gardai. It outlined how young criminals were set up for arrest in legally dubious circumstances while Boylan was permitted to import huge quantities of drugs. Callinan was among the senior officers implicated in the scandal, and was accused of blocking the Gsoc investigation for years.”
“In 2013 also, Callinan told Simon O’Brien, the Gsoc chairman, he was concerned about the information that The Sunday Times was publishing about sensitive investigations. This remark and other issues prompted the garda watchdog to hire Verrimus, a British firm, to advise on internal security in late 2013. The company advised Gsoc of “technical and electronic anomalies” that could not be explained, and raised concerns about the integrity of its communications system. The cancellation of penalty points also became a big issue during 2013.”
Indeed.
It was on April 19, 2013, that the Irish Independent published Gemma O’Doherty’s story that Callinan himself had penalty points wiped.
In addition, Gavin Sheridan, in yesterday Sunday Business Post, wrote:
‘Eleven years ago, in 2004, when the first report of the Morris Tribunal was published a specific criticism was made. “The destruction by a member of any official files after retirement…can never be tolerated…It should be made clear to all gardaí that such documentation is the property of An Garda Síochána. It does not belong to the member concerned,” Judge Morris wrote.’
Read the Fennelly report here
Previously: ‘These Things Haven’t Happened’
Fennelly Report: The Digested Read
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