From top: Lorraine and Maurice McCabe; Cathal McMahon and John Kierans

Cathal McMahon worked as a crime reporter with the Irish Mirror between July 2012 and June 2014 – roughly the same period of time that Supt Dave Taylor was the head of the Garda Press Office.

He told the Disclosures Tribunal that sometime in early 2014 – and most likely in January or February 2014 – he was told by a source that Sgt Maurice McCabe had been investigated over an allegation of child sex abuse in the Cavan area and that “the allegation was historic in nature”.

Mr McMahon didn’t identify this source to the tribunal.

But he confirmed it was neither Supt Taylor, the then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan or the then Deputy Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan.

He also confirmed it wasn’t any member of An Garda Síochána.

Asked what he did with this information, Mr McMahon said:

“I then contacted Superintendent Dave Taylor, who was at the time the Press Officer, and he confirmed the story as I had given it to him, and the only addition was that he suggested that maybe I should go to Cavan and find further details there.”

Mr McMahon said Supt Taylor – whom he contacted directly by phone – didn’t direct him to go to anyone in particular in Cavan and Mr McMahon didn’t ask him to point to anyone in particular.

He said he was “dubious” about the allegation because “obviously if the allegation was true, it would have been investigated, he may have been brought before the courts”.

He said he wasn’t aware of the outcome of the investigation into Ms D’s complaint and that he and Supt Taylor did not discuss the DPP’s directions regarding Ms Ds complaint.

Mr McMahon said, after speaking with Supt Taylor, he thought the next prudent step was to talk to his editor John Kierans – whom, Mr McMahon said, told him he didn’t feel it was a story worth pursuing. Mr McMahon said he was satisfied with this response.

But the tribunal heard Mr Kierans – in a statement to the tribunal, before he gave evidence – say that he thought Mr McMahon was “disappointed” with this response.

When this was put to Mr McMahon, he said that wasn’t his memory of what happened.

Mr McMahon told the tribunal about his interaction with Supt Taylor in June 2018, after his former editor John Kierans first told the tribunal of the matter in the same month.

Similarly to other journalists, the tribunal wrote to Mr McMahon in March and April 2017 – but “no substantial reply” was received.

When Mr McMahon was asked why he didn’t tell the tribunal about this encounter with Supt Taylor from the outset, Mr McMahon said:

“I sought legal counsel at the time, and I was taken to believe that my evidence didn’t fall within the terms of reference of the Tribunal. I obviously had serious concerns about the protection of sources, as a number of colleagues in other newspapers have raised.

“I didn’t write anything about this story. I never pursued the story outside a very short conversation. I wasn’t negatively briefed about Sergeant McCabe by any of the people mentioned as part of the terms of reference of this Tribunal. And I also wasn’t named by Superintendent Dave Taylor as one of the 11 journalists he said he had negatively briefed.”

Mr McMahon wasn’t named by Supt Taylor when he initially claimed to have negatively briefed nine journalists – Paul Williams, of the Irish Independent; Paul Reynolds, of RTE; John Mooney, of The Sunday Times; Michael O’Toole, of the Irish Daily Star; Juno McEnroe, of the Irish Examiner; Cormac O’Keeffe, of the Irish Examiner; Daniel McConnell, of the Irish Examiner; Conor Lally, of The Irish Times and John Burke, of RTE – about Sgt McCabe.

He later added two – Debbie McCann, of the Irish Mail on Sunday, and Eavan Murray, of The Irish Sun – after the D family told the tribunal that the two journalists had separately called to their house in early 2014 – in an attempt to talk about Ms D and Sgt McCabe.

None of these journalists confirmed Supt Taylor’s claim that he negatively briefed them, and Mr McMahon also told the tribunal that Supt Taylor never negatively briefed him.

But in relation to this position, that he wasn’t negatively briefed by Supt Taylor, Mr McMahon had this exchange with Kathleen Leader BL, for the tribunal.

Leader: “You say you weren’t negatively briefed about Sergeant McCabe, but at the same time you’re saying you did speak to Superintendent Taylor in relation to the D allegation, as it is referred to here, and he pointed you in a particular direction. Do you consider that negatively briefing?”

McMahon: “It was a direction I already knew. He was merely repeating what I had already said to him — in terms of the location of where the allegation had come from.”

Leader: “Right. But, for instance, Superintendent Taylor could say, look, there’s nothing to that and leave it at that, instead of pointing you in a particular direction, maybe — maybe it does actually constitute negative briefing, pointing you in a particular direction, hinting that you should take the story a bit further, do you see that now, with the benefit of hindsight?”

McMahon: “I’m not quite sure what you are asking, sorry.”

Judge Peter Charleton then attempted to tease out Ms Leader’s question for Mr McMahon when they had the following exchange:

Charleton: “In other words, counsel’s question, as I understand it, is this: You hear a rumour, then you go to someone who is expected to know whether the rumour
is true or not, but the person then confirms the rumour, and added on to that is, well, what I would take as an invitation to go and look into the matter further and the place you need to look into it is indeed the area you mentioned. That is counsel’s question.”

Leader: “Yes.”

Charleton: “So that –”

McMahon: “Are you asking me if I should have come forward sooner?”

Charleton: “No, I think — I know what counsel is actually asking you is, I suppose, the definition of negative briefing, do you see that as being helpful to Sergeant McCabe or not helpful to Sergeant McCabe? If it was you they were talking about –”

McMahon: “I understand.”

Charleton: “– that there was an historical allegation of sex abuse, that it happened in relation to a child, if they went to your editor and if they asked the question, look, is it true what they say about this fellow, and the editor confirmed it, yes, and furthermore, if you want to find out more, the place to go is Drumcondra, where this thing happened, counsel is asking you how would you feel about that?”

McMahon: “Yes, I understand.”

Leader: “Yes.”

McMahon: “So are you asking me to say if I feel like I should have taken different steps?”

Leader: “Well, no, do you think now, having heard it explained to you in those terms, that that constitutes negative briefing?”

McMahon: “I don’t believe I was negatively briefed.”

It was also put to Mr McMahon by John Ferry BL, for Supt Taylor, that because Supt Taylor didn’t set him straight on the Ms D allegation – that that was a form of negative briefing.

Mr McMahon accepted that that was Mr Ferry’s view.

Mr Ferry also told Mr McMahon that Supt Taylor maintained that Mr McMahon was a journalist whom he negatively briefed about Sgt McCabe at crime scenes and during phone conversations.

But Mr McMahon maintained that this was not correct and that they only had the one interaction about Sgt McCabe, referred to above.

Mr Ferry also put it to Mr McMahon that it was Supt Taylor’s case that Mr McMahon didn’t go to Supt Taylor about Sgt McCabe and Ms D but, instead, Supt Taylor briefed Mr McMahon.

Mr McMahon said: “That is simply not true.”

And in regards to Mr McMahon’s claim that Supt Taylor directed him to Cavan, Mr Ferry BL, for Supt Taylor, said Supt Taylor maintains “he never referred or directed any journalist to travel to Cavan”.

When Mr Kierans gave his evidence to the tribunal, he said he didn’t have much to say in dispute with Mr McMahon.

Recalling the day Mr McMahon told him about the Ms D allegation, which was the first time Mr Kierans heard about the allegation, Mr Kierans said:

“Basically, Cathal got this really good story, came in to us, we had a meeting in the boardroom in the office in Dublin, he said that he had a cracking story about that Sergeant McCabe had been questioned over the abuse of a child. I was quite shocked, you know. In our world we would have looked at it as one hell of a story, but my antenna was up and I felt that something wasn’t right.

“And it’s one thing for somebody to be questioned by the police, but my view of it was, well, why hadn’t he been charged, you know. And, like, we talked about the story. I don’t really — because it’s four or five years ago, I don’t really remember the full discussion I had with Cathal, to be honest about it, and, you know, I took a decision, you know, I spoke to the news desk about it, some of my executives, and over the next couple of days Cathal said that he’d go to Cavan, and I told him not to, that I wanted to hold off, that I just felt something was wrong here, that I didn’t really believe it.

“My view of it was, you know, this was a very, very serious story, if we are going to run it, the risks to the publication from a defamation point of view would have been absolutely huge, you know, we were talking about millions, making an allegation, if it turned out to be false, against a Garda whistleblower, and also the fact that Sergeant McCabe had been a whistleblower also, you know, I don’t always believe everything that I’m told by governments or by the police. So, for that reason, I kind of decided that we’d back off.

“Now, I didn’t believe the story and I wasn’t going to run it, so I more or less told Cathal to just concentrate on other things, that I wasn’t going to take a risk on it, and I didn’t really believe it in my gut, to be perfectly honest.”

“…And then the other thing that was in my head: Why are the cops telling us this? You know, why are the gardaí telling us that Maurice McCabe has been questioned over a child sex abuse allegation, you know? And the fact that he was a whistleblower, you know, I kind of said there’s something not right here. So again, in my gut, I felt my antenna was up and I walked away from the story. I’m glad I did because it was absolutely totally untrue.”

Mr Kierans told the tribunal that Mr McMahon never told him the identity of his initial source but he did think it was Supt Taylor, however he said he accepted that Mr McMahon had told the tribunal that this wasn’t the case.

Mr Kierans told the tribunal Mr McMahon is an honest individual.

He said:

“I just couldn’t believe that the cops were spinning it, that’s the way I had seen it, that they so easily confirmed — you know, Cathal said that the guards had confirmed it. I can’t remember if I asked him specifically who it was, but I assumed it was Dave Taylor. Like, in fairness to Cathal, he’s a very honest reporter, always has been, he would always tell you the truth, and, as a journalist, he would never, ever put you wrong on a story. He’s a very low-key guy. He’s not one of those guys who wants to be on television every night of the week, and he’s a very honest individual.”

He also reiterated how suspicious he was of what had been confirmed to Mr McMahon, saying:

“It also kind of alarms me as well when the Garda Press Office were confirming a story against an existing member of their own force, right, because normally if a member of the Garda Síochána is in any trouble, they tend to cover it up from one end of the country to another, because they really stand together, the guards.”

Mr Kierans did see Paul Williams’ first article about Sgt McCabe and Ms D in the Irish Independent on April 12, 2014. Asked if he was regretting his decision not to send Mr McMahon to Cavan, Mr Kierans said:

“Absolutely not. I thought they were mad in the head to run it. Because it was anonymous, it was no names, what did it mean? Like, to Joe public, unless people are named, they don’t really know who they are. So you had a garda questioned over an allegation of paedophilia and there was no more detail, you know, so it was all anonymous. And you had quotes from the victim, is my recollection of it.

“So my view is, I didn’t care less, that is their business, and I suspect they’ll probably pay a price for it.“

Mr Kierans, like Mr McMahon, didn’t tell the tribunal the information above until he gave a statement to the tribunal in June 2018.

Asked about this delay, he said:

“I like to tell the truth as best I can and I think this Tribunal is really important, I think that the Irish people have a right to know what was going on in the Gardaí at this particular time of our history, and when the investigators initially came into my office and interviewed me and they asked me had we come across any stories in relation to Maurice McCabe, and I didn’t remember any.

“And then subsequent to that, I think it was on the day I was due to come in here to give evidence, I had a phone call with somebody and then it just triggered a memory that I had and I mentioned it to my lawyer and he said, well, you’d better make a new statement to the Tribunal, and this is how it came about that this story that Cathal had, I had completely forgotten about it, and Cathal had been out of my mind because he’d left the Mirror and moved on to other publications, and that’s how it came to be.”

Mr Kierans didn’t tell the tribunal who he had spoken with on the phone.

He also went on to say he believes that when a source waives their privilege, journalistic privilege no longer applies.

He said:

“I think we’ve spent a lifetime cultivating our contacts and we build them up, and especially real confidential informants, it takes a lot of time and trust, and a lot of these people are your best friends and, you know, but if somebody wants — if a contact came to me and wanted to be identified, I would have no problem with it.

“But I have to say and I point out that in 38 years I have never had a contact who came to me, you know. But in this case Mr Taylor has identified himself, so I personally see no problem with it. I think privilege is something that should be cherished and it’s really important for our industry, and equally, I don’t think it should be misused either.”

Mr Kierans also told the tribunal that, after Mr McMahon brought his attention to the Ms D matter, “I would have discovered then over the following two or three weeks that that story had been peddled around town by Superintendent Taylor to a number of other news outlets”.

He latter added:

“I don’t know who he briefed or who he didn’t briefed. All I’m telling you is, my understanding was that that story that we came across was peddled around other newsrooms.”

In response to this, Judge Peter Charleton asked Mr Ferry BL, for Supt Taylor, to find out what Supt Taylor’s response was to that claim.

The judge also made a lengthy plea for anyone with information to come forward and suggested there may be consequences for those with information who weren’t coming forward then but may go public in the future.

He said:

“The evidence now from Mr Kierans is that this particular story was peddled around the town to at least two or three other newsrooms or news editors by Superintendent Taylor, and I think it is up to him to say whether that happened or not and what the names of those people are. And whereas I am grateful, obviously, to the media, and from time to time I see, because I do read the newspapers and I get both entertainment and instruction from them, perhaps colourful things that I have said in relation to, I don’t know, Kurosawa or anything else like that coming up, but this is a very serious matter.

“I mean, this thing is beginning to come to an end and I would be grateful if the message would go forth through whatever media are present in the room, there is actually a duty on people who actually know something about this to come forward. I made that plea back in February 2017, and here is yet another variation of people not coming forward, perhaps, perhaps suppressing matters, here is a view being expressed in relation to a situation where an individual has completely waived their privilege.

“If people say they have a privilege but they know something, I would much rather know that, than for them to simply, if it is the case, sit in their office blocks and not come to the Tribunal and not communicate.

“There is a website. communicate. There is a phone line. It is manned. It will be manned indeed all day on Saturday. This matter is coming close to an end. And I regard it as not a legal obligation, but much, much more serious than that: a patriotic obligation of people who know something to come forward so that the people of Ireland aren’t left in the daft situation that people who know things in the journalistic profession have not come forward to speak, but, nonetheless, will be able to write articles about what happened to them in the aftermath of the Tribunal report appearing.

“Now, in the event that that happens, the people of Ireland will no doubt take their own view as to the credibility of the persons who do that and that may indeed cause damage to the media outlets who may be involved in this, and I don’t know if they are or not, much worse than any libel action on earth; in other words, people simply stop trusting journalists. And it is important that they do, because journalists fulfil an extremely important function within our society and one which personally I value very highly.”

Mr Ferry later told Judge Charleton that “there’s no other names that he [Supt Taylor] wishes to add to the list”.

Judge Charleton said it wasn’t “a question of wishing. It’s a question of actually assisting in this process”.

Mr Ferry repeated there were no other journalists’ named to be added to Supt Taylor’s list but he confirmed for the judge that Supt Taylor didn’t brief editors or newsrooms directly – he claims he simply told certain journalists.

As Mr Kierans wouldn’t tell the tribunal which newsrooms he believed were “peddled” the matters concerning Sgt McCabe and Ms D, Ms Leader BL, for the tribunal, had the following exchange with Mr Kierans.

Leader: “I just wonder if I could ask you the question in another way. The Tribunal knows that DMG Media [Mail] was aware of this story from the evidence Debbie McCann has given to the Tribunal; the Tribunal also knows that Independent News and Media was aware of the story from evidence given by Mr [Paul] Williams; the Tribunal also knows the Irish Times was aware of the story from Mr [Conor] Lally’s evidence; and there was also, Mr [Michael] O’Toole was aware of the story who I think is The Star?”

Kierans: “Yeah.”

Leader: “The Daily Star?”

Kierans: “Mm-hmm.”

Leader: “And then we have Ms [Eavan] Murray’s evidence from The Sun?”

Kierans: “The Sun.”

Leader: “Are there any other newsrooms that the Tribunal should be aware of?”

Kierans: “Not that I’m aware of, no.”

Leader: “All right. Thank you very much.”

Judge Peter Charleton is due to publish his report in October. He examined allegations made by former head of the Garda Press Office Supt Dave Taylor that he was instructed by former Commissioner Martin Callinan, with the knowledge of then Deputy Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan, to convey to journalists that an investigation into the Ms D allegation against Sgt McCabe  was the “root cause” of Sgt McCabe’s whistleblowing. The DPP ruled Ms D’s allegation had no foundation in April 2007 while Mr Callinan and Ms O’Sullivan both deny Supt Taylor’s claims.

Previously: Maurice McCabe And The Irish Daily Star

Maurice McCabe And The Irish Sun

Maurice McCabe And The Irish Examiner: Part 2

Maurice McCabe And The irish Examiner: Part 1

Maurice McCabe And The Mail Newspapers

 Maurice McCabe And INM: Part 2

Maurice McCabe And INM: Part 1

Maurice McCabe And RTÉ

Maurice McCabe And The Irish Times

Maurice McCabe And The Irish Times: Part 2

Maurice McCabe And The Sunday Times

From top: Lorraine and Maurice McCabe; Supt Dave Taylor, Eavan Murray and Fergus O’Shea

Reporters from Ireland’s three main ‘red top’ tabloids gave evidence at the Disclosures Tribunal: Eavan Murray, of The Irish Sun; Michael O’Toole, of the Irish Daily Star; and Cathal McMahon, formerly of the Irish Mirror.

Eavan Murray, of The Irish Sun, gave evidence as she visited the D house in early 2014 and, after the D family told the tribunal about this visit, Supt Dave Taylor confirmed that she was one of the journalists he negatively briefed about Ms D and Sgt Maurice McCabe.

Michael O’Toole, of the Irish Daily Star, gave evidence as he was one of the initial nine journalists named by Supt Taylor as having been negatively briefed by him. Mr O’Toole didn’t physically visit the D house in early 2014 but the tribunal heard he did make contact with Mr D via Facebook around that time – according to Mr D.

Cathal McMahon, formerly of the Irish Mirror, also gave evidence after the Irish Mirror‘s editor John Kierans told its investigators that Mr McMahon came to him about the Ms D matter and Sgt McCabe in early 2014.

As Mr McMahon was in the witness box, counsel for Supt Taylor said Mr McMahon was also a journalist whom he negatively briefed. The tribunal heard Supt Taylor didn’t include him in the original list as he was no longer working as a journalist at the time.

Ms Murray, Mr O’Toole and Mr McMahon all deny being negatively briefed by Supt Taylor.

Following on from Mr McMahon’s evidence, the editor of the Irish Mirror John Kierans answered questions in the tribunal while The Irish Sun‘s former deputy head of news Fergus O’Shea also gave evidence, following on from Ms Murray’s evidence.

Eavan Murray started working as a journalist in the Sunday World in Belfast in 2006, after having worked in social services.

She later worked with the Star on Sunday in Dublin, the Irish News of the World, the Irish Daily Mirror and then went back to the Sunday World in Belfast.

In November 2013, she took up a full-time position as a news reporter with the Irish Sun in Dublin and she told the tribunal it wasn’t until early 2014 that she first came in contact with Supt Taylor at a murder scene.

Ms Murray’s first phone contact with Supt Taylor was on February 10, 2014, and the tribunal heard this contact came about because the Irish Sun‘s crime editor Stephen Breen was going on holidays and, while he was away, he suggested she make contact with Supt Taylor in order to be on the Garda Press Office mailing list.

Ms Murray would go on to have extensive contacts with Supt Taylor – especially after he was moved out of the Garda Press Office to the Traffic department in Dublin Castle in June 2014.

The tribunal heard that billing records show Supt Taylor had 11,000 communications with journalists between September 2014 and December 2014 – a quarter (2,800) of these were with Ms Murray; while 190 were with John Mooney, of The Sunday Times, and 17 were with Juno McEnroe, of the Irish Examiner.

Ms Murray remained in regular contact with Supt Taylor until he was arrested and suspended in May 2015, the tribunal heard.

However, these communications are not central to the terms of reference of the Disclosures Tribunal as its chairman Judge Peter Charleton is looking at what occurred during the time period of the alleged smear campaign against Sgt McCabe which, according to the former head of the Garda Press Office Supt Taylor, took place from mid-2013 until the day the then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan resigned in March 2014.

[Ms Murray said that from September 2014 onwards her communications with Supt Taylor increased after he asked her for her help with his college work and thesis – which she agreed to. Supt Taylor was studying for a Masters in Political Communication at the time at Dublin City University]

Evidence given to the tribunal via reports from Forensic Science Northern Ireland – which studied the phones, iPads and laptops recovered by the tribunal from Supt Taylor and former Garda Commissioners Martin Callinan and Nóirín O’Sullivan – showed Ms Murray helped Supt Taylor write an essay for his course in November 2014.

The essay was a study of how The Irish Sun versus The Irish Times covered the resignation of Martin Callinan. It included references to Ms Murray’s own reporting on the matter and concluded that The Irish Sun showed “a more balanced and in-depth scrutiny of the government’s role in the issue which was lacking in The Irish Times at times”.]

Supt Taylor’s communications with journalists – before and after he was moved out of the Garda Press Office in June 2014 – were the focus of a Garda criminal investigation and Ms Murray told the tribunal she was “deeply traumatised” by those events.

She also said it was somewhat as a consequence of that experience that she declined to tell the tribunal – after it stated writing to her from March 2017 – about her contacts with Supt Taylor and that she believed she hadn’t been negatively briefed.

The tribunal heard Ms Murray’s consistent reply to the tribunal, when it sent her letters seeking information, was:

“It is my practice as a journalist not to comment on news-gathering activities or sources. I believe that I have certain professional obligations in that regard. I note from your letter that the Tribunal will be considering the issue of journalistic privilege.”

[This is the same response John Mooney, of The Sunday Times – which, along with The Irish Sun, is owned by News Corp – gave to the tribunal when it wrote to him.]

It was put to Ms Murray that if it was the case that she wasn’t negatively briefed, she could have told the tribunal this without infringing on her journalistic privilege. She agreed.

She also said:

“In retrospect, I suppose I probably should have then… I was anxious at the time… I suppose the best way I can explain it, Chairman, it’s kind of counterintuitive to everything…I was deeply traumatised over everything that went on, to be honest…I can only tell you my feelings at the time. I couldn’t believe that I was being dragged into another situation.”

And:

“I was adopting the position just that I felt, you know, a lot of journalists were taking. I mean, as I said before, it’s hugely counterintuitive to you when you’re being asked questions about your contacts with any guard, any source, you know…”

Even when Ms Murray, represented by solicitor Simon McAleese at the time, met with the tribunal’s investigators in October 2017 – at which point the tribunal had been told by the D family that Ms Murray had visited the D house in early 2014 – Ms Murray still “effectively said nothing”, Diarmaid McGuinness SC, for the tribunal, told the tribunal.

It also heard an attempt had been made by Ms Murray to give the tribunal’s investigators information “off the record” but the investigators couldn’t accept this – and didn’t hear what this information would have been.

Eitherway, Ms Murray was categorical when she gave evidence that she wasn’t negatively briefed by Supt Taylor in early 2014, saying that, at that time, “I barely knew him at all”.

Ms Murray also claims that she never spoke to Supt Taylor before she visited the D house.

It’s been Supt Taylor’s evidence that he did know she (and separately Debbie McCann, of the Irish Mail on Sunday) was going to call to the D house and that he encouraged them both, separately, to go. Ms Murray told the tribunal Supt Taylor’s evidence on this is “not true”.

Supt Taylor has also told the tribunal that he would have contacted the then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan to relay to him what the journalists told him [ SuptTaylor].

He also told the tribunal that he confirmed for Ms Murray, and Ms McCann, that it was Mr D’s daughter who made the allegation against Sgt McCabe; and that the two female journalists knew of An Garda Siochana’s attitude towards Sgt McCabe because of “previous briefings”.

Ms Murray said all of Supt Taylor’s claims above were untrue.

But Ms Murray did confirm one claim made by Supt Taylor – that she did speak to him about her visit after it took place.

Until Ms Murray gave evidence, the tribunal was of the understanding that Ms Murray was the second journalist to visit the D house in early 2014 – after Debbie McCann, of the Irish Mail on Sunday, and before Paul Williams, of the Irish Independent.

[When Mr Williams gave evidence, he said that when he went to the D house, the D family told him that Ms Murray had already called to the house]

But when Ms Murray gave evidence, she claimed she was at the D house after Mr Williams.

Ms Murray said the reason she believes she was there after Mr Williams is because, according to Ms Murray, Ms D’s parents spoke to her about a video interview Mr Williams had done with Ms D when he first met her on March 8, 2014.

She said:

“…they were quite anxious about the fact that she [Ms D] had done an interview to camera.”

Ms Murray claims she went to the D house prompted by the knowledge that the Irish Independent was going to publish a “huge exclusive” which was to “run over a number of days” about Sgt McCabe, Ms D and a child sex abuse allegation.

She said she first heard about this from the deputy news editor at The Irish Sun at the time, Fergus O’Shea, and that he told her to go to the D house.

Mr O’Shea, who left the Irish Sun in June 2017, told the tribunal he can’t recall sending Ms Murray to the D house.

He told the tribunal, in a statement:

“I remember Ms Murray coming to me and saying there may have been an allegation which was somewhat unclear made against Maurice McCabe and that the alleged victim might be willing to talk to us.”

Mr O’Shea also said he hadn’t heard of any allegation against Sgt McCabe prior to Ms Murray bringing it to his attention.

He also said he brought what Ms Murray said to the then editor Paul Clarkson and that they were wary of the matter as Sgt McCabe was a whistleblower.

Mr O’Shea said, because of a potential defamation case, “we just said leave it alone”. (Ms Murray told the tribunal she was not told not to go to the D house.)

Mr O’Shea said that a number of weeks later, he learned that Ms Murray had gone to the D house in Cavan. But, he said, he didn’t know how that visit came to occur.

He said:

“I mean, I was number two on the news desk, so depending who was working that day, it probably would have come from the person above me or from the editor. I find it hard to believe I would have made that decision on my own.”

Mr O’Shea also said he couldn’t recall ever hearing about the Irish Independent‘s pending articles on Ms D and Sgt McCabe.

He said:

“I can’t see how I would have got that information and I would have no problem sharing it here if I had. I guess there is a possibility that someone in the office got wind of it and in that way it came up and then was decided that she went, that is her recollection, that is fair enough, but it wasn’t through me.”

Ms Murray said:

“I don’t know how they [The Irish Sun] came to know about it, but it wouldn’t be unusual that we would hear that one newspaper has a big story, you know, it wouldn’t be unusual at all. I mean, particularly, I suppose, Paul Williams is a very accomplished and experienced man, he tends to, when he has big stories, they’re massive stories – you know, he had the Anglo tapes and things like that – so you pay attention.

“It wouldn’t be unusual for us to hear that another newspaper had a big story.”

Ms Murray also told the tribunal she never spoke to Mr Williams about his pending articles and that she doesn’t know him “at all”.

[Stephen Rae, then Group Editor of INM, told the tribunal, he was very surprised to learn the Irish Sun had heard about the pending articles in the Irish Independent]

Ms Murray said the purpose of her going up to the D house was to ensure that, if the Irish Independent, did publish a story, then The Irish Sun wouldn’t be wholly behind.

She said she had initially heard about the Ms D allegation against Sgt McCabe in either January or February of 2014 but she didn’t yet know Ms D’s identity.

The information came to her by way of a conversation with someone about the penalty points controversy and the person with whom Ms Murray was speaking was “sick” of hearing about the penalty points in the news.

Ms Murray also told the tribunal that she felt somewhat sorry for gardai at the time of the penalty points controversy, saying:

“I thought that maybe it was being politicised unfairly in some way. You know, I think I felt that — my job at the time, I was covering courts a huge amount of the time, and I can remember feeling quite sorry for regular guards, thinking that they are being sort of done down constantly by this one issue that I thought there was, you know — that was my feeling at the time.”

In a fresh statement to the tribunal – given just hours before she gave evidence – Ms Murray said the following about the Ms D allegation:

“It was at all relevant times something that was fairly well known in the world of Irish journalism.”

Asked about this, Ms Murray said:

“…the person actually, they didn’t go into a huge amount of detail about it, he just said that there was an allegation in the past about Maurice McCabe, there had been an allegation of sexual assault. But it didn’t go anywhere…”

Ms Murray said the exchange was a “very small interaction”.

She added:

“… my understanding was that this allegation was never proceeded with. I never really thought about it again, to be honest. And then when I heard that the Irish Independent had this rather massive exclusive, I thought that maybe there was something else to it. I thought that maybe there was another branch to it or maybe it had been reinvestigated or maybe it was a different allegation. I just didn’t know.”

Ms Murray said she obtained Ms D’s family name from a journalist but didn’t tell the tribunal their identity.

However, she confirmed it was neither Debbie McCann, of the Irish Mail on Sunday, or Michael O’Toole, of the Irish Daily Star.

Of this person, she later said:

“This person would have been very good to me, really. I would have trusted his sources, to be honest, Chairman.”

Before setting off for the D house, she obtained the family home’s landline phone number via Directory Enquiries and called the D home, from The Irish Sun‘s Dublin office, and spoke with Mr D.

Ms Murray said:

“I think he said that they had — I don’t know what the exact term was but that Paul Williams, I think, was their preferential choice… Paul Williams being their preferential choice, you know. Somewhat alarmed when I said I was from the Sun.”

Ms Murray said Mr D then called her back, within minutes, and, according to Ms Murray, he “wasn’t hostile to the notion” that she would call to the house.

She added:

“I mean, he knew, he knew, he knew that I was down there to try and find information.”

Ms Murray also said she didn’t know that Ms McCann, of the Irish Mail on Sunday, had been up to the house and she didn’t learn about this until Mrs D told her – on the day she visited.

Of the visit to the D house – during which Ms Murray only met Ms D’s – Ms Murray said:

“…it was unusual in the sense that I was there in the capacity as a journalist, Chairman, but it turned into really a conversation just between three people. As soon as I got to the house, I felt quite guilty, to be honest, because they seemed very weary. I wouldn’t go so — like, they were very, very, very nice, but they just seemed exhausted, and I can remember just feeling quite sorry for them.

“… And I don’t mean that in any kind of a slur on Mr McCabe at all. But I can remember feeling quite guilty. It turned into a conversation just between three individuals and they asked me about my experience as reporting on people that tend to go public with accusations – and, again, I would just like to say I do not in any way mean that as anything against Maurice McCabe – and I gave them a fairly honest answer about that, as much as I could in my experience.

“People that go public about these things, it can seem like a good decision when you’re very young, in your early 20s, but in ten years’ time it may not be such a good decision; like, if you are married and you have children of your own.”

She also said:

“I can remember being somewhat surprised at the minor nature of it [Ms D’s allegation], and the thought crossed my mind that maybe it was worse and she hadn’t been truthful with her parents about that, because I just couldn’t understand how anyone — you couldn’t publish something like that, you could never publish something like that.”

And she said:

“I hope I’m not upsetting anyone by saying this, but my abiding memory is of Mrs D, that she was a very, very nice lady, but she said to me they themselves struggle with the fact that it was such a minor incident had such a massive affect on, allegedly on their daughter, you know, and she asked a child counsellor about it at one stage, why — how can such a minor incident affect someone so much.”

Ms Murray said she has never met Ms D but she did add her on Facebook after she met with her parents. However she said she never actually contacted Ms D.

After her visit to the D house, Ms Murray said the Irish Sun had no interest in the Ms D story and that:

“It was very much a kind of wait and see what the Irish Independent does and we will follow on afterwards. So I told — I did, I told — I can remember saying, look, they’re nice people and everything, I said, but there’s absolutely nothing here that we could ever publish.”

Ms Murray said after her visit, she told Supt Taylor about calling to the D house.

She said, at the time, Supt Taylor was annoyed with the then Minister for Transport Leo Varadkar for stating at a Road Safety Authority event in Dublin Castle that Sgt McCabe and former Garda John Wilson were “distinguished”.

At the same event, Mr Varadkar called on Mr Callinan to withdraw the “disgusting” remark he made in relation to the garda whistleblowers at a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee in January 2014.

Mr Varadkar made his “distinguished” comment on March 20, 2014.

When asked about her exchange with Supt Taylor in relation to this, Ms Murray couldn’t explain how or why their conversation went from Mr Varadkar’s “distinguished” comment to her visit to the D house.

She said:

“I have taken advices and I don’t regard this as privileged. It would have been some time after I went up there, I did say to him that I had been up there, I said I’d interviewed that family. I said I thought that they were very nice, the parents, I said, but there’s just absolutely no way you could ever publish something like that. He wasn’t too bothered.”

“… he was somewhat annoyed about comments Leo Varadkar had made, where he had said that the whistleblowers were distinguished, and I said I met that family, I went up to Cavan and met that family, I said. I actually said, do you realise that that was such a very minor allegation?”

“…He wasn’t at all — he didn’t — he didn’t seem at all put out that I had no intention to publish.”

“And my recollection is, it was extremely brief and then he moved on to something else.”

Michael McDowell SC, for Sgt McCabe, asked Ms Murray what preceded this exchange with Supt Taylor and asked her why she was discussing the Ms D matter with Supt Taylor at all.

They had this exchange:

McDowell: “Can I ask you, what preceded that? I mean, why were you discussing the allegation at all with him?”

Murray: “He was somewhat exercised by comments made by Leo Varadkar.”

McDowell: “Just hold on a second. The former Commissioner had said that the actions of the whistleblowers were ‘disgusting’.”

Murray: “Mm-hmm.”

McDowell: “And he’s told us that he meant the actions in disclosing information about third parties.”

Murray: “Yes.”

McDowell: “Minister Varadkar says in public: I would use the term ‘distinguished’ rather than ‘disgusting’ –”

Murray: “Yes.”

McDowell: “– referring to the penalty points matter, is that right?”

Murray: “Yes.”

McDowell: “So would you now tell me how, in that context, the allegation of sexual abuse arose in conversation between yourself and Superintendent Taylor?”

Murray: “He was giving out about Leo Varadkar.”

McDowell: “Yeah. And he was criticising, used the word ‘distinguished’ –”

Murray: “He just thought he was causing trouble for Commissioner Callinan.”

McDowell: “Yes. And I’m suggesting to you that the missing link here is that he must have said something to you about the sexual assault because you said –”

Murray: “No, I said to him: You know that allegation, I actually interviewed those people, there was nothing in it.”

McDowell: “How was that relevant to whether he was ‘distinguished’ rather than ‘disgusting’?”

Murray: “I suppose it’s kind of –”

McDowell: “You know that allegation you put to him, isn’t that right? You just said now: I said to him, you know that allegation, I actually interviewed those people, there’s nothing in it.”

Murray: “I said it’s just not something we could ever –”

McDowell: “So you must have had some prior conversation about it?”

Later

McDowell: “I’m just trying to put sense on it.”

Murray: “Yeah.”

McDowell: “He says, you know, that man Varadkar is completely –”

Murray: “Causing trouble, yeah.”

McDowell: “– goes on and saying that he is distinguished. How do you get from that to a discussion about Ms D’s allegation of sexual assault?”

Murray: “I said it to him. I said, I told him.”

McDowell: “You told him what?”

Murray: “That I had been up there to Cavan.”

McDowell: “To do what?”

Murray: “To interview –”

McDowell: “About what?”

Murray: “About this allegation. It was well-known –”

McDowell: “Were you telling him for the first time in all of your dealings that you had –”

Murray: “There hadn’t been a huge amount of dealings with him, though.”

McDowell: “No. But, I mean, the point is, that if you are saying this in response to his suggestion that the word ‘distinguished’ was inappropriate for Sergeant McCabe, it seems to me, and I’m just giving you an opportunity to deal with it, that you must have had a prior discussion –”

Murray: “I didn’t.”

McDowell: “– or must have brought up the subject with him of the sexual allegation?”

Murray: “I have no recollection of ever bringing that up with him, ever, or him bringing it up with me.”

Later, Ms Murray and Mr McDowell had this exchange:

McDowell: “…but if the conversation was running along that line and that ‘disgusting’ was the better word to apply to him, could that have been a trigger for you mentioning the sexual abuse allegation?”

Murray: “Yeah. Yes. Yes, sir. Yes, Chairman. I suppose so.”

The tribunal saw Ms Murray was in phone contact with Supt Taylor on the day of Paul Williams’ first article about Ms D in the Irish Independent on April 12, 2014.

As she had seen the article that day, Ms Murray was asked if this call with Supt Taylor involved a discussion about Mr Williams’ article.

Ms Murray said she didn’t recall it being discussed.

In relation to Mr Williams’ first article, in which Ms D was anonymised and Sgt McCabe, according to Michael McDowell SC, for Sgt McCabe, was “semi-anonymised”, Ms Murray said:

“Firstly, I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t go, when it didn’t run, and then when it finally did run I thought that was the only way they could have ever ran it.”

After Supt Taylor made a protected disclosure about the alleged smear campaign against Sgt McCabe in September 2016, Ms Murray said she didn’t know it was related to him initially but she thought it sounded like him.

She later got a text from an unnamed friend who told her it was him.

She said she then called Supt Taylor.

Ms Murray told the tribunal:

“I was just kind of like, why are you doing this to yourself, how could you drag yourself into another investigation, kind of, and he was very sort of, trying to get me off the phone as quick as possible.”

She said she was subsequently shocked to learn that she was named by Supt Taylor as someone who had been negatively briefed, by him, about Sgt McCabe.

And she said when she met Supt Taylor on February 14 or 15 of this year, he never told her that he had named her.

She said:

“Out of the blue, a few months ago, I got a text off his wife [Michelle Taylor] asking me for my address and she sent me a present for my baby, but it was unusual in that he was six months old at this stage, and obviously I was curious about the Tribunal, I was — I was sort of in naive hope that maybe I wouldn’t be called, Chairman, to be honest, I was hoping, and I hadn’t heard from you in a long time, so I just was hoping it was just a bad memory, and so I was in Dublin for that week, my mother was in hospital, I used the opportunity to meet with a few people, but one of them being Superintendent Taylor, because, to be honest, my motivation in doing so was to find out just information, you know, I wanted to find out did he name me.

“And he, even though he was sitting across from me in a coffee shop, did not admit that he had given my name to this Tribunal. And I had said — I recall saying, oh, I don’t think they’re going to come looking for me now, I said I think that maybe they don’t really want me, and he said, oh, well, they might, they might, you know. He did not, he didn’t — and do you know, I suppose, the bizarre part was, the letter from yourselves must have actually literally been in the post because I got it just a couple of days later.”

Asked about her concern that Supt Taylor was going to name her, or had named her, Ms Murray said:

“My fear was that he would use the fact that the Ds had named me to — named me and Debbie, that he would use that to bolster his own story. And I was correct.“

John Ferry BL, for Supt Taylor, put it to Ms Murray: “You were part of a smear campaign and you were being used as part of that when you were sent to Cavan?”

Ms Murray replied: “I was not.”

They then had this exchange:

Ferry: “You’ve already said you spoke to some person after coming to Dublin, you spoke to Fergus O’Shea, you’ve denied speaking to David Taylor, and you’re saying you didn’t speak to anybody else, so it appears you didn’t carry out any checks and balances?”

Murray: “That’s not true.”

Ferry: “And you headed straight to Cavan on what you said would be a casual run up to Cavan, a nice day out?”

Murray: “I think by going to visit them, the direct source is actually the best kind of checks and balances I could have carried out.”

Ferry: “And I put it to you that the only reason why you would head off on such a mission is that the dogs in the street were talking about the sergeant and you thought there was truth to this allegation that was in the ether about him?”

Murray: “I didn’t.”

Ferry: “And I put to you that the only way that you had a conversation with Superintendent Taylor in around the 20th March referring back to Ms D is because you’d had a previous conversation with him?”

Murray: “I didn’t.”

Ferry: “And finally, I put it to you that the only way that you could have uttered the words as a journalist there was nothing you could ever have published, is because you had been given a very sinister version by the first person you spoke to in Dublin about the story behind Sergeant McCabe?”

Murray: “Okay. We have to disagree.”

Tomorrow: Maurice McCabe And The Irish Daily Star

Previously: Maurice McCabe And The Irish Examiner: Part 2

Maurice McCabe And The irish Examiner: Part 1

Maurice McCabe And The Mail Newspapers

 Maurice McCabe And INM: Part 2

Maurice McCabe And INM: Part 1

Maurice McCabe And RTÉ

Maurice McCabe And The Irish Times

Maurice McCabe And The Irish Times: Part 2

Maurice McCabe And The Sunday Times

From top: Sgt Maurice McCabe, Michael Clifford, Supt Dave Taylor (right panel) and Tim Vaughan

During the Disclosures Tribunal, the matter of the protection of media sources was discussed at length.

Justice Peter Charleton told the tribunal that he had grown up following the Watergate hearings, which took place in the summer of 1973.

The example of Deep Throat, Bob Woodward’s source for his and fellow reporter Carl Bernstein’s exposés in The Washington Post, was cited throughout by the judge and also many of the witnesses.

However, often for opposing reasons.

Deep Throat (Mark Felt) divulged his role in 2012, freeing the two reporters to confirm his identity.

Former Garda Press Officer Supt Dave Taylor, who said he negatively briefed journalists at the behest of senior gardai, has sought similar confirmation from his alleged former sources.

In fact, it is claimed, to not do so was and is causing him untold damage.

One witness, who said there was no exceptions to when a source’s identity could be revealed or confirmed ,was asked:

“Did Woodward and Bernstein get it wrong?“

Another witness, a newspaper editor, actually used Mr Felt as an example to explain why he wouldn’t discuss anything about anybody.

He said:

 “Bob Woodward said that he agreed with Mark Felt that the only way that Mark Felt would never be identified as a possible source in the future was to ensure that he would tell no one that they knew each other in any way or that Bob Woodward knew anybody in the FBI.”

Tim Vaughan, former editor of the Irish Examiner, who said he too had followed the Watergate saga growing up, told the tribunal

“It isn’t the source’s right to erode the journalist’s right to protect their source.“

During Mr Vaughan’s editorship of the Irish Examiner, which ended in 2016, Michael Clifford was the newspaper’s ‘special correspondent’.

Mr Clifford confirmed that Supt. Dave Taylor was a source of his.

But there was a problem

While Mark Felt’s motives to help remove a president (a grievance over a lost promotion among them) were never entirely pure, he was at least attempting to help establish the truth.

Supt Taylor’s motivation for turning against his bosses and his actions since then are simply unfathomable.

He is, to put it mildly, no Deep Throat.

Mr Clifford gave evidence about a week after three of his colleagues – political correspondent Juno McEnroe, security correspondent Cormac O’Keeffe and political editor Daniel McConnell – gave evidence. (full report in part 1 here)

Mr Clifford, who wrote the book A Force For Justice – The Maurice McCabe Story which was published last September, was named by  Supt Taylor – along with RTÉ Prime Time’s Katie Hannon – as being a journalist whom he didn’t negatively brief about Garda whistleblower Sgt McCabe.

Specifically, Supt Taylor said Mr Clifford and Ms Hannon were “clearly writing articles and programmes that were sympathetic to Sergeant McCabe”.

Mr Clifford began writing about Sgt McCabe – without naming him – in May 2013, after an internal Garda investigation into the penalty points controversy had been published by Assistant Commissioner John O’Mahony.

The following year, in 2014, he heard about a rumour concerning Sgt McCabe on three different occasions.

Interestingly, unlike other previous witnesses who had heard the rumour and satisfied themselves it wasn’t true, Mr Clifford was suspicious from the off.

The first occasion Mr Clifford heard the rumour was during a conversation, in “early 2014”, with someone Mr Clifford described as a “source” who wasn’t a guard.

Mr Clifford recalled:

“I mentioned something to the effect about Maurice McCabe, there’s a lot to that story, a lot more than has come out, and he said words to the effect that there is an issue there, and I asked him what the issue was and he said there had been an allegation of child sexual abuse. He got this, he told me, locally in Cavan. He said the general feeling was that he wasn’t guilty or responsible for the allegation, that there wasn’t any foundation to it, but, the way he put it is, that is still there, it’s still hanging over him.”

After this conversation, Mr Clifford said he was “floored”, made inquiries and satisfied himself there was no foundation to the allegation.

But at this point he was suspicious the allegation was “being used to attack Sergeant McCabe on the basis of what he was bringing forward.”

He said:

“I had been following the story, it didn’t seem to be getting much traction in the media in general and then out of the blue this thing comes along. I then made inquiries about it, I made inquiries in Cavan. I made — I satisfied myself as to the veracity of what the story was.

“I also became aware that Sergeant McCabe’s legal team were aware of this issue and to be honest with you I found that very reassuring, to the extent that Mr McDowell, for instance, is a public figure and the idea that he would have been involved or allowed himself to be used in any way to run an agenda by somebody who had these kind of issues in their background, was beyond any sort of belief as far as I could see.

“But I also satisfied myself as to what actually happened; I did not know the detail that has emerged here in the Tribunal but the general gist of that to a large extent, I satisfied myself that that was the case.”

The second occasion the allegation was brought to Mr Clifford’s attention was during a telephone conversation with someone whom Mr Clifford said, “is very familiar with politics and on the basis of my own conversations with him he has a friendship at the very least with a senior garda”.

Mr Clifford told the tribunal the senior guard is not a garda whom the tribunal has been examining.

This second man bluntly told Mr Clifford “You know your man McCabe is a kiddie fiddler”.

Mr Clifford felt the man’s information was coming from his Garda friend.

He told the tribunal:

“I explained to him that I had heard that, I had checked it out, there was no truth to it. He sounded sceptical in my response. The only connection there, and as I say I don’t know this but this would just be a suspicion on a previous occasion, that particular individual had relayed to me about a friend of his, a senior garda who had described myself in disparaging terms and on that basis I assumed, rightly or wrongly, that this is where it was coming from when he mentioned it to me about Sergeant McCabe.”

Mr Clifford didn’t disclose the identities of the two people who spoke to him about Sgt McCabe.

He told Patrick Marrinan SC, for the tribunal, that he’s satisfied that even if he did identify the two men, it wouldn’t assist the tribunal.

The third occasion the allegation against Sgt McCabe was raised with Mr Clifford was when his then editor Tim Vaughan contacted him, in the second half of 2014.

Mr Clifford recalled:

“He rang me and he said — he sounded slightly, not alarmed but slightly urgent and he said that had it come to him, somebody had suggested to him that Maurice McCabe was involved in these issues and I reassured him, I said Tim, I have come across it, there’s no truth to it, I think it’s actually being used against the man, and that was it. And to the best of my knowledge he accepted my explanation entirely and certainly didn’t affect work that the Irish Examiner did thereafter on this story.”

Mr Vaughan told the tribunal he had heard a rumour about a sexual assault allegation against Sgt McCabe during a phone conversation with a contact “who knows about Dublin media”. Mr Vaughan said this contact didn’t know where the rumour came from, while the tribunal didn’t hear the identity of this contact.

Mr Clifford said as he works from home, he couldn’t recall any specific conversation with other journalists about the allegation but he definitely had as sense it was in the “ether” in 2016.

This was the same year Mr Clifford met Supt Taylor for the first time.

Mr Clifford told the tribunal that he got a phone call from Supt Taylor in either late May or early June of 2016, on foot of an article Mr Clifford had written about the O’Higgins Commission of Investigation which mentioned Supt Taylor.

[In May 2016, Mr Clifford, and separately Ms Hannon, on RTÉ’s Prime Time, reported on the legal strategy used by the then Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan at the O’Higgins Commission of Investigation in 2015. Separately, Supt Taylor had been arrested and suspended in May 2015 for allegedly leaking material to the press when he was no longer press officer. The DPP ruled against a prosecution. But at the tribunal, Supt Taylor accepted he had leaked material to the press. Supt Taylor went back to work in the Traffic Department in February 2017]

Mr Clifford had never met Supt Taylor at this point.

He explained:

“I got a phone call, I remember it because I was in my mother’s house in Cork, and it must have been a Saturday evening. He said ‘Dave Taylor here’, for a couple of seconds I couldn’t place him, then he said ‘thanks for the mention in the piece’ and then I realised who I was talking to. And we had a bit of a conversation, he made some comments about Nóirín O’Sullivan and the difficulties she was having at the time and how, in his opinion, she wasn’t very good for the Gardaí or whatever.

“And he also made comments about Sergeant McCabe, and he said what Maurice was going through, and he referenced him twice I think as Maurice, which I found — I thought it was amusing or ironic, the right words, because as far as I was concerned he had been Garda HQ, which had, I believed, a very hostile attitude towards Maurice McCabe and now he was speaking about him in these terms, but that was the nature of it.

“And anyway, that phone call didn’t last too long and he suggested going for a cup of coffee sometime and I said grand, and I left it at that. And to be honest with you I wasn’t at that point that interested in meeting him for a cup of coffee and I just left it at that on a cordial basis.

Mr Clifford believes he then met Supt Taylor in either late August or early September 2016 and then a second time on the first weekend of October 2016.

Of their first meeting, Mr Clifford said he can’t recall who called whom, but either way, Supt Taylor suggested they meet at his home.

This came about after Mr Clifford had heard from a source that Supt Taylor’s wife Michelle had met with Sgt McCabe.

Mr Clifford said there were “two prongs” to their meeting. The first was the poor financial situation Supt Taylor and his family were in because of his suspension and the second was how Supt Taylor came to be in this position.

Mr Clifford said Supt Taylor conveyed that “the central character in that was Nóirín O’Sullivan”.

He said Supt Taylor claimed that either Garda HQ or Mr O’Sullivan were obsessed with Sgt McCabe and his highlighting of issues within An Garda Síochána; he said Supt Taylor didn’t have a good working relationship with Ms O’Sullivan; and he said Supt Taylor said he and Martin Callinan had, at one point, suspected she was leaking to the media “in the form that I think is more familiar to political or business world of one person briefing against another”.

Mr Clifford and Judge Charleton spoke about this for some time:

Clifford: “…he suggested that Nóirín O’Sullivan, that they thought — sorry, that himself and Martin Callinan were under the impression or they thought that Nóirín O’Sullivan was leaking stuff to the media, effectively briefing the deputy commissioner, effectively briefing against the Commissioner. Again, this is — he didn’t give an example of that, or anything, but he threw that in, and, as I say, I only recall that because that is from the near-contemporaneous note I had.”

Charleton: “Yes. Well, was he trying to give you the impression that Garda Headquarters was some a kind of a viper pit where everyone was against everybody else and trying to destroy the other?”

Clifford: “He wouldn’t have to give me that impression, Chairman, I’d say I probably had that impression myself, but there was an element of that there.”

Charleton: “All right. Well, can we just turn to the note, if you wouldn’t mind, it’s 6628, and would you mind just telling me where there is any reference to that, because it’s not obvious to me. This is your note, what you typed up on your PC.”

Clifford: “Sorry, yeah, the reference down there:

“MC and DT suspected she was releasing info to us how divided they were going back a number of years.”

Charleton: “That is it, yes. So that is what that means?”

Clifford: “Yes, that is my —

Charleton: “I don’t get — in a way, I don’t get this, and on a human level I am finding this hard to understand, Mr Clifford, that everything seems to be about PR and what the newspapers are saying, as opposed to what you are doing yourself, in reality.”

Clifford: “Oh, I think that theme runs through the whole situation, to be quite honest with you.”

Mr Clifford told the tribunal that he had no basis on which to believe anything of what Supt Taylor was telling him was true, but it was what Supt Taylor told him.

Mr Clifford also said Supt Taylor said, on the day Mr Callinan resigned, he [Mr Callinan] asked Supt Taylor to get a letter to RTÉ’s crime correspondent Paul Williams about the taping of telephone conversations in Garda stations.

He said Mr Callinan made the request after he had stepped down.

Mr Clifford said:

“…he says he was asked to do that by Martin Callinan, even though Martin Callinan had just resigned that morning, he placed huge emphasis on Nóirín O’Sullivan’s reaction to him doing that. He said that — he said she was very annoyed, to put it at its mildest, but his big thing that was her position was that he was now working for her as she was Commissioner and he shouldn’t have been doing something for Martin Callinan. That is the way he framed whatever happened there but he certainly gave the emphasis that that signalled a rapid deterioration in any relationship he had with Nóirín O’Sullivan, by his account.”

Mr Clifford said, on this occasion, Supt Taylor mostly talked about himself.

As for any alleged smear campaign against Sgt McCabe, Mr Clifford said:

“The general gist of it was that Martin Callinan would send him a text or a message and that — which would be derogatory towards Sergeant McCabe in one form or another, and he passed this on, I believe he said to other senior officers and to the media. I cannot tell you 100 percent that he said he texted the media or spoke to them verbally. I understand that he said he told me he only spoke verbally, I have no recollection of that. But I can’t be 100 percent of that.

“But what I am absolutely sure of, in terms of that conversation, is the centrality of these text messages, because his thesis, if you want to call it that, was that the whole investigation, suspension of him from his job was associated with the fact that then Commissioner O’Sullivan wanted to get her hands on his phone because that was what you might call the smoking gun in terms of anything to link her to the type of attitudes there was to Maurice McCabe back in ’13 and ’14, and he effectively blamed his demise as such on that issue, and he put forward the case that it was all linked to the Commissioner, through her husband, who was on the investigation team, he described it at the time as heading it up, getting her hands on that phone to effectively destroy any evidence linking her to this campaign that he says was going on.”

Mr Clifford next met Supt Taylor on the first weekend of October in 2016.

By this stage, Supt Taylor, and Sgt McCabe, had made separate protected disclosures – after Supt Taylor told him on September 20, 2016, that he had “destroyed” Sgt McCabe via a smear campaign.

On this second occasion, Mr Clifford asked Supt Taylor to clarify three matters based on information he had acquired elsewhere – that texts had been used as part of the alleged smear campaign, that an intelligence file had been created on Sgt McCabe in Garda HQ; and that somebody had been appointed to monitor Sgt McCabe’s activity on Pulse.

Mr Clifford said Supt Taylor confirmed all three of these were correct.

He also said Supt Taylor definitely conveyed to Mr Clifford that phones which had been seized from him – during the investigation into him – were “key to everything”.

[The tribunal has since heard that the phones seized from Supt Taylor were not relevant to the time period when the alleged smear campaign took place. They, instead, were from after that time period. And the phones that were relevant to that time period were never recovered by the tribunal but were not in possession of An Garda Síochána. Instead, they were in Supt Taylor’s own possession but he lost them.]

Asked specifically what he could recall of his conversation with Supt Taylor about texts during their meeting in October 2016, Mr Clifford said:

“The impression I got was that these text messages were sent, as I understood it, to senior officers or senior management rather than one individual. I wasn’t 100 percent sure on that. Neither was I 100 percent sure that they were sent to journalists. But the emphasis that was put on them was that these text messages contain effectively statements, language, whatever, that shows that this campaign he was claiming was run was being run and, therefore, people who would have been informed had knowledge of it.

“That was the general gist of where I interpreted him as coming from with the whole issue around text messages. As I say, I can’t say definitively that he said he sent texts to journalists but he most definitely said that he sent texts of this nature to Nóirín O’Sullivan and, my recollection, to senior management in the Gardaí.”

[Supt Taylor has denied to the tribunal that he indicated this to Mr Clifford. He also denies indicating the same thing to Sgt McCabe and Independents 4 Change TDs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace]

Mr Clifford also told the tribunal that the manner in which Supt Taylor told him about the seizure of his phones seemed “practised”.

He said:

“He effectively made a case or presented a thesis, if you want to put it that way. I also, and again this is only my speculation, on the basis it was done, it was either practised or else he had done a similar exercise with people prior to me. That was my impression.

“If I could put it this way: The presentation of that case, the manner in which it was done, it struck me that he had either practiced this or he had made a similar presentation to perhaps other journalists, perhaps other people, I don’t know, that was an impression that I came away with from that.”

The judge clarified with Mr Clifford: “What you are saying is, it wasn’t improvised out, it seems to be a presentation like you would get a presentation like slides or whatever?”

Mr Clifford explained again:

“Yeah. Well, obviously, Chairman, not as professional as that, but just in terms of the general tenor. For example, there was some paperwork there, it was on the coffee table, and you know, small stacks at right angles, as would you, you know, and just the whole thrust of what he was saying, as I say, it wasn’t something that struck me as being presented simultaneously or off the top of his head kind of thing.”

Mr Clifford couldn’t recall whether it was during the first or second meeting that Supt Taylor told him he would have conveyed the Ms D allegation – which had been categorically dismissed by the DPP in 2017 – to journalists in 2013/2014 to the effect that there was “no smoke without fire”.

[Curiously, this is something Supt Taylor also told the tribunal’s investigators in an interview, but something he later backtracked on when he gave evidence]

In May 2017, Mr Clifford emailed Supt Taylor a section of his book. In his email, Mr Clifford wrote:

“Dave
This is the chapter I was telling you about, where you enter the McCabe story. See what you think, particularly in terms of factual accuracy.
Thanks, talk soon.”

In the excerpt sent to Supt Taylor, there were the flowing the lines about Supt Taylor’s meeting with Sgt McCabe on September 20, 2016:

Within days, Supt Taylor got back to Mr Clifford.

He sent him one correction – to say he hadn’t been interviewed by the Children’s Ombudsman in relation to the leaking of material concerning Roma children to the press in October 2013 – and that was it.

Supt Taylor never corrected Mr Clifford on his account of his meeting with  Sgt McCabe.

Even after the publication of his book, Supt Taylor still never told Mr Clifford that what he wrote was incorrect.

When Supt Taylor gave evidence, he said he scanned the extract and didn’t read it line by line.

Michael O’Higgins SC, for Supt Taylor, put it to Mr Clifford that for Supt Taylor to have sent disparaging texts about Sgt McCabe to journalists would defeat the purpose of trying to influence the journalists “off the record”.

Mr Clifford said:

“That’s correct. With the proviso that it would depend on how close your relationship might have been with a particular journalist.”

Conor Dignam SC, for An Garda Síochána, asked Mr Clifford about his reports in the Irish Examiner on October 4, 2016, about the protected disclosures made by Supt Taylor and Sgt McCabe.

In an analysis piece, Mr Clifford wrote:

“The disclosures allege that there was a concerted campaign amongst senior management in the force to destroy the character of a whistleblower. There were different strands to the alleged campaign, including the dissemination of text messages containing falsehoods about the officer in question, briefing of elements of the media and even the creation of an intelligence file on the officer.”

The tribunal heard the Irish Examiner‘s coverage didn’t yield any complaints from Supt Taylor.

Mr Dignam took issue with the use of the word “revelations” in the newspaper’s coverage that day but Mr Clifford pointed out the “revelation” was the fact protected disclosures had been made, as opposed to the content of the disclosures.

Asked if he checked the veracity of the claims which he reported, Mr Clifford told Mr Dignam:

“There was very little I could do in that regard. In terms of publishing that and feeling justified in publishing it, there are a couple of things in that regard that I would say: First of all, this is — in publishing that, it’s a process whereby it goes through the editorial hierarchy inside in the Examiner, which backed up my decision that this was in the public interest and that this should have been published.

“Then you are talking about the substance of the issue. In the first instance, this was unprecedented. You had a superintendent in An Garda Síochána nominally of good standing, was making a protected disclosure about what was occurring within the force. That of itself was completely unprecedented.

“Equally so, who he was incriminating in there. In the first instance he was incriminating himself. I don’t know even since the protected disclosure or anything of that nature has come in, have we ever had a scenario whereby somebody making it was incriminating and incriminating himself to the extent that he was admitting that he was involved in a smear campaign to effectively brand Sergeant McCabe as a paedophile and to do so for no other than to ingratiate himself to his boss or further his career.

“That is that element of it. The second element: The other person he incriminated was former Commissioner Callinan, somebody with whom he had a very good relationship, whom he looked up to and whom he regarded as something of a mentor.”

Mr Dignam asked Mr Clifford if the animus which Supt Taylor had shown towards Ms O’Sullivan caused him concern in publishing his articles in October 2016 about the protected disclosures.

Mr Clifford said:

“It certainly gave me pause for thought, but you have to put this into context; in many instances that I would come across and many instances of any nature for — the most obvious example is a tribunal, that, fortunately, Chairman, I don’t think you will be heading for the record of 13 years, but the Planning Tribunal — the Planning Tribunal, as I think we are aware, began over a grudge an individual had for his employer not providing a pension. That is the nature of these things.

“Now, absolutely, I took that into account, but as I was saying to you before, I balanced that against both the substance of the allegation in terms of my
knowledge over the previous three or four years, both the fact that it was self-incriminating and that it was also incriminating somebody to whom Mr. Taylor obviously looked up to.

“All scenarios like that in terms of publication, some sort of a balance has to be reached between suppressing information – and I was in possession of that information – and the fairness to everybody involved, and, in my opinion, that was achieved. It wasn’t just desirable to publish it, but it was necessary to publish it.”

It was put to Mr Clifford, by Mr Dignam, that the articles caused a “storm of controversy”, to which Mr Clifford replied:

“It certainly did, Mr Dignam, but I will also have to add to that, I’m afraid, that is not my responsibility.”

He later added:

“As a newsworthy event, as an event in which there is public interest, this was unprecedented.”

Just before Mr Clifford finished giving evidence, Mr Dignam pressed Mr Clifford on his source for information about the meeting which took place between Sgt McCabe, Supt Taylor and his wife Michelle.

Mr Clifford said:

“As far as I know, I’m the only person coming in here speaking in any detail about any interaction with David Taylor on the basis he has waived privilege. That is a precarious road to go down on the basis of identifying other sources, so I don’t want to go any further than that.”

Judge Charleton then stepped in and said this about journalists and privilege:

“I mean, at the end of the day, you know, Mr Dignam, again it’s a question of where we go on this, and I appreciate where you are coming from and the skill with which you are doing this, but, look, I am not asked in the terms of reference to comment on the media, whether the media did a good or bad job or whether paper will refuse ink, whether there should be higher standards in journalism. I mean, people can form their own view on that, and if they don’t like what they read in a paper, they can stop buying it, or if they don’t like what they hear on any particular form of media, they can just, you know, turn somewhere else.”

“…I mean, at the end of the day, what was said in the room, if you like, is between Michelle Taylor and David Taylor and Maurice McCabe and the various reports of that. I’m not going to be helped, one way or the other, by anything else. And vis-á-vis Mr. Clifford and David Taylor and the waiving of privilege, I understand where Mr. Clifford is coming from in that regard, but, you know, again it’s a question of where are the side alleys in this and should — if a hare runs down there, should I follow for the purpose of seeing if there is anything there. I would prefer to stick with what I am supposed to do.

“I presume David Taylor and Michelle Taylor spoke to other people, I presume Maurice McCabe spoke to other people, I presume he got advice. The circumstances under which information stays confined is extremely rare. And this is more like an inkblot, to be quite frank; it lands on the page and it spreads out. You know, it’s not going to help me, because, at the end of the day, the primary evidence, instead of the dúirt bean liom go ndúirt bean léi (go ndúirt bean eile) rud éigin, is the three people in the room and what was written down in consequence of it. So that is the reason I am not following it, Mr Dignam.”

Judge Charleton also said that he’s unlikely to come to any conclusion about Mr Clifford’s articles but indicated he may make a comment in his report about Paul Williams’ articles in the Irish Independent about Sgt McCabe and Ms D in April and May 2014.

He said:

“Mr Clifford, I have no issue with anything that you did, and, in any event, I have no — I have no power to report on it, one way or the other. It may be that something in relation to the articles concerning Maurice McCabe as an unnamed individual may call for some comment, but yours certainly don’t. So thank you for your assistance.”

The tribunal also heard neither Mr Callinan nor Ms O’Sullivan ever made any complaints to Mr Clifford or the Irish Examiner about Mr Clifford’s articles on the protected disclosures.

When questioning Mr Vaughan about sources and their protection, Justice Charleton introduced Watergate once more.

Justice Charleton said:

“I’m not sure in the Woodward and Bernstein example here [sources waiving privilege], what people are so worried about …”

Before wondering:

“Unless, of course, things are much worse or there is some kind of a side agreement.”

They then had this exchange:

Charleton: “Well, in the Woodward and Bernstein example, do you think that erodes – source protection, for them to be talking about that, for the person in question to have come forward and said, ‘Yes, I was Deep Throat’ and ‘Yes, I am the source of the articles that appeared’, which exposed the then-president of the United States in a not very favourable fashion? I can’t see a — I can’t see that that bulwark is in any way breached or dissolved or even threatened. Can you?”

Vaughan: “I think we have to disagree.”

Charleton: “Fine. I’m happy to disagree with people, but you have to give me a reason for disagreeing. What is the reason? Just take the Woodward and Bernstein example, were they in the wrong? I mean, having done such huge credit to journalism, are we saying that somehow they are now anti-heroes, having been heroes? What is the reason? I am grasping around trying to fathom what it is. I am very willing to listen.”

Vaughan: “I wouldn’t — I would not, myself, if I had a source who was claiming or revealing that he was the source, I would not reveal that he was.”

Charleton: “And if the net result of that was he was going to be called a malicious perjurer and he was actually asking for your help, it’d be the same?”

Vaughan: “I think you’ve got to — I would — it would be a difficult situation, but I think you’ve got to uphold the integrity of — I don’t think you can pick and choose in these matters.”

Charleton: “Nobody is picking and choosing, no more than Woodward and Bernstein picked and chose. Maybe we have discussed it enough. But, I mean, is it possible that the reason has to be in those circumstances that there is some kind of a side agreement between the source that it’s only — I’m only going to go so far and you can’t say any more, or that the relationship has become too close so that it is no longer based on privilege, it is no longer based on journalistic ethics, but is based effectively on a relationship with the person who has outed himself as the source?”

Vaughan: “Sorry, I don’t get your point there, Chairman.”

Charleton: “Well, I’m struggling on this one. Thanks for your help.”

Previously: Maurice McCabe And The irish Examiner: Part 2

Maurice McCabe And The Mail Newspapers

 Maurice McCabe And INM: Part 2

Maurice McCabe And INM: Part 1

Maurice McCabe And RTÉ

Maurice McCabe And The Irish Times

Maurice McCabe And The Irish Times: Part 2

Maurice McCabe And The Sunday Times