Maurice McCabe almost broke down yesterday when he gave evidence that a Garda Commissioner, Martin Callinan, has spread rumours that he had ‘sexually abuse his own children and his nieces’.
He reported how he met a Garda press officer who had told him that ‘I destroyed you’.
Callinan retired from the Gardai on an annual pension of €85,000 a year and a €255,000 lump sum. Before he departed, ten bags of his personal papers were shredded, including in all likelihood his diary for 2013. The Gardai also claimed that Callinan’s official mobile phone could not be located.
At no time, however, did any Fine Gael TD call for Callinan’s sacking – even though it there was growing evidence that he had been involved in spreading rumours about McCabe.
Maurice McCabe claimed that the next Garda Commissioner, Noirin O Sullivan, was aware of Callinan’s tactics and was in fact a ‘pusher’ of negative media briefings against him.
The type of negative stories was typified by an article that by Paul Williams who suggested that there were allegation of sexual abuse against Maurice McCabe.
Yet the Fine Gael, Justice Minister, Francis Fitzgerald stood by O Sullivan until the very last minute. She knew about her strategy to attack his character at a tribunal and did absolutely nothing.
Fine Gael presents itself as the ‘law and order’ party. Yet it stood by Garda Commissioners who were willing to destroy an honest cop.
In the eyes of the Garda leadership, McCabe was a ‘trouble maker’ because he had blown the whistle on how Gardai in the Bailieboro area had not properly investigated at allegation of sexual assault against a woman.
He had also reported how people with connections to the Gardai had their penalty points wiped out.
So here is the question.
If the leadership of the Gardai were willing to falsely accuse an honest cop of sexual abuse, to what length will they go against others in the wider society that they call ‘troublemakers’?
But of one thing we can be sure.
Whatever the Gardai do, Fine Gael will stick by them because they support hierarchy and control.
Maurice McCabe’s shocking evidence gives a brief glimpse of the lengths the establishment will go to defend themselves. Be warned.
