Nov/Dec 2016 3 7
conducted by the US-based Global Community Monitor,
was told by Ed Collins, an American-born local resident
of how he had “been beaten, assaulted, kicked, choked,
punched… kicked and battered since day one”. One
alleged Garda assault left him with a knee so badly dam-
aged that for a considerable period he was confined to
a wheelchair, unable to walk. Betty Noone told of seeing
gardaí drag a woman to the side of a road – “…she tried
to get up, and as a third Garda left her… he kicked her”.
John Monaghan, a former Irish Press journalist told of
how a Garda had threatened to rape his wife. He has an
audio recording – that he says is of this incident.
Another recording shows how sergeant James Gill
joked about raping two female protesters who had been
arrested. But the Garda Ombudsman found that no
action could be taken against him as he had retired. He
had also exercised his right to silence throughout his
questioning and “largely gave a ‘no-comment’ inter-
view” to them. Not one of the accused gardaí was
disciplined.
The Ian Bailey case currently wending its way to the
French courts has aired serious allegations that gardaí
considered paying someone in order to frame Bailey for
murder.
Details of suspected drunk-driving involving Garda-
unfriendly TD Clare Daly were leaked to the media by
gardaí, only for the blood test to prove negative. Garda
also leaked details of how her companion Mick Wallace
TD was stopped and cautioned for using a mobile phone
while driving. The normally scrupulous then-Minister for
Justice revealed this, casually, during a 'Prime Time'
debate with Wallace and is, naturally, being sued.
Meanwhile, the Fennelly Commission is investigating
whether calls recorded in Bandon Garda Station about
Bailey disclose unlawful Garda contact.
In 2009, then-Justice-Minister, Dermot Ahern,
declined to explain why the state dropped a case against
a presumed Garda informant, Kieran Boylan, caught in
possession of €1.7m worth of cocaine and heroin while
on bail. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)
informed the courts he would not pursue the case. An
investigation in May 2013 by our weak Garda Ombuds-
man into the affair concluded with no evidence
established of any improper conduct by gardaí. It was
later revealed that gardaí had disrupted the Ombuds-
man’s investigation.
In 2014, the Ombudsman disclosed there had been a
security alert at its office arising from a suspicion that
gardaí were bugging the office due to its investigation
into this affair.
All this in a constitution of democracy.
The Smithwick and Barr tribunals investigated Garda
behaviour. The findings were shocking:; someone in
Dundalk Garda station allegedly colluded with the Pro-
visional IRA in the murder of two RUC officers; gross
Garda incompetence resulted in the shooting to death of
mentally fragile 27-year old John Carthy in Abbeylara,
County Longford.
Worse, because the problems it outlines are endemic
and unresolved, are the events that led to the Morris Tri
-
bunal. Frank Shortt, a chartered acccountant was the
victim of a shocking abuse of power on the part of a
superintendent and a Detective Garda in Donegal who
engaged in a conspiracy to concoct false evidence
against him which in turn resulted in perjured garda evi-
dence being given at his trial for allegedly permitting
drugs to be sold in his pub in County Donegal in 1992.
That perjury procured his conviction by a jury. What fol
-
lowed as a consequence for the plaintiff was a tormenting
saga of imprisonment, mental and physical deteriora-
tion, estrangement from family, loss of business, and
despair. As a High Court Judge put it, “the plaintiff was
sacrificed to assist the career ambitions of a number of
members of the Garda Síochána”. The debacle led to the
Morris Tribunal.
That investigation’s second module looked into the
death of cattle dealer Richie Barron which the judge
described as "an extraordinary shambles". "There is evi-
dence of wilful blunders, gross negligence, laziness,
emotionally wrong-headed rushes to judge people as
guilty and a determination by some parties to ensure
that, even if there was no evidence, that the suspicions
formulated were going to stick and stick permanently".
Between May 2007 and
November 2009, 111
complaints about alleged
Garda violence and
intimidation were submitted
to the Garda Síochána
Ombudsman Commission,
but none was upheld
Former Commissioner Martin Callinan
and his successor Noirín O'Sullivan
The guards

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