CABINET IS TO meet today to discuss the possibility of holding a public inquiry into allegations that a smear campaign against Sergeant Maurice McCabe was orchestrated by senior gardaí.
McCabe has said in public that he does not want a private inquiry and that he will only be happy if one is held in the open.
The garda sergeant last night held meetings with Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáíl over what happens next.
In a statement yesterday afternoon, the McCabe family said they had “endured eight years of great suffering, private nightmare, public defamation and State vilification”. The statement said that this arose out of the determination of McCabe to ensure that gardai adhered to decent and appropriate standards of policing.
It added: “Our personal lives and our family life, and the lives of our five children, have been systematically attacked in a number of ways by agencies of the Irish State and by people working for the State in those agencies.”
Calling for the public inquiry, McCabe and his wife Lorraine said, although Health Minister Simon Harris said that they were entitled to “truth and justice”, that they wouldn’t get that if they had to wait 18 months for the findings of a private inquiry.
The McCabes have called for a number of questions to be answered in the course of a public inquiry.
They include if senior gardaí were formally or informally notified of the alleged sexual abuse case against McCabe, which gardaí were involved in the claim, and why McCabe was not informed of these allegations in 2013.
With reporting by Seán Murray
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