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CLAIMS THAT GARDAÍ involved in the arrest of Clare Daly for alleged drink-driving two years ago are not cooperating with an ombudsman investigation have been rejected today.
Independent TD Mick Wallace told the Dáil yesterday that the Garda Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) had told Daly’s solicitor that gardaí directly involved in her arrest had declined to provide their accounts or cooperate with the investigation.
Wallace claimed the letter stated that GSOC had failed to get the cooperation of gardaí in the releasing documentation related to the arrest.
Daly was pulled over by gardaí for a wrong turn and arrested after a breathaliser failed to register a reading on 28 January 2013. Details of the arrest were subsequently leaked to media. She was subsequently cleared and later complained to GSOC and the Data Protection Commissioner.
GSOC has confirmed the authenticity of the letter Wallace read into the Dáil record yesterday.
The garda watchdog said the letter was sent “sometime ago” but declined to confirm exactly when it was sent. Daly and Wallace did not respond to requests for comments today.
Documents seen by TheJournal.ie indicate that the two gardaí who arrested Daly have cooperated with the inquiry. It’s also understood that several other gardaí based in Kilmainham, who were asked to give evidence, also cooperated.
The contents of the GSOC letter are disputed by the Garda Representative Association (GRA), which represents rank-and-file gardaí.
GRA spokesperson Damien McCarthy said that its members fully cooperated with every aspect of the investigation and hit out what he said was another example of TDs abusing Dáil privilege.
He said he was not aware of the letter until Wallace’s claims in the Dáil.
We have a perception out there again that we’re failing to cooperate with inquiries and I’m rejecting that. The people I represent fully cooperated with the investigation at all times.
McCarthy said the issue is having a damaging effect on the gardaí he represents and the GRA.
He said that the GRA, through its solicitors, has been writing to GSOC on an almost monthly basis since the investigation was established in early 2013 to obtain an update, but has not received a satisfactory response.
It’s understood that the investigation file is with the Ombudsman Commission for review. A GSOC spokesperson told us: “The investigation is ongoing and is expected to be concluded within the next few months.”
Taoiseach Enda Kenny pledged to raise Wallace’s claims with Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald. However, Fitzgerald said today that GSOC had told her “consistently” in recent months that “they’re happy with the level of cooperation they’re getting”.
“I need to get details of that GSOC letter and precisely when it was written. My understanding is that there is ongoing cooperation between the gardaí and GSOC,” she told reporters.
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Daly and Wallace. Twiddle dum and twiddle dee. Personally I hope they don’t get re-elected.
I’m no fan of Wallace or Daly. Very much the opposite in truth. But how are they the protagonists here?
If the Gardaí dealt with you like this, staging an arrest and then leaking it, how tweedled would you be? It’s not right and the fact that they are once again beyond being taken to account for it is a travesty. Every attempt to reform the current Garda failings in structure and procedure has been met with nothing short of utter belligerence and contempt. How can anyone following this (and other recent issues) not take the view that our police force considers itself above the laws they are sworn to uphold?
It is corruption at the heart of our civil service, plain and simple.
The arrest was not staged. Clare Daly as she has admitted herself was drinking whiskey on an empty stomach before she got into her car and started driving around Dublin 8. She tried to make an illegal right turn which attracted the attention of gardai who correctly arrested her on suspicion of drink driving so they could obtain a urine sample.
Is Daly now suggesting the Gardai forced whiskey down her gullet? And has the righteous hobo Wallace paid back the 1.5 million euro in VAT that he trousered for himself?
Personally I hope they do get re-elected, because although I disagree with the independent thing, somebody, something needs to stop the madness that is the established stalwart FG, FF and Lab tie up that is doing no favours for Ireland or it’s people
lets face it ..we could get a FF+ Lad or FG +Lad or FF+FG or phuck it FG+FG + LAB and tie the whole thing up..because let me tell you..they dont give a phuck between them as long as they all met up in the dail bar next year and divi up the pay and pensions
“Is Daly now suggesting the Gardai forced whiskey down her gullet? And has the righteous hobo Wallace paid back the 1.5 million euro in VAT that he trousered for himself?”
I’ve said above I have no truck with the politics or general carry on of these people. But that doesn’t mean that agents of the state can abuse them. They may be politicians, and all that sadly entails, but they are still people, they have rights.
Since you at least had the decency to use your words, rather than clicking buttons in a ludicrous internet points charade, please answer me this. Why were the Gardaí driving behind her for so long, in excess of 5 minutes by their own admission? Why did their breathalyser not work? Why was a non threatening and co-operating suspect handcuffed, against Garda procedure (now and at the time) and, as recently established by the Supreme Court in the Cullen case, in breach of her constitutional rights? Why were the details in the press faster than the results of the *negative* urine test could be returned?
These things could all be a grand coincidence, you’re certainly entitled to that opinion although I do not share it. But we (and by that I do me everyone, from leftist loon to corporate drone-iticians) have these protections for reasons that are not political. They are supposed to transcend all of that, although this comments section would seem very inclined to try and disprove that.
Perhaps that is the saddest thing of all. Perhaps the Gardaí are only taking what we are freely giving them. What a horrible thought.
John Considine, who said that she was a “non threatening and co-operating” person? From what we see and hear from her I doubt very much that she was a polite co-operating person on the night of her arrest. You wonder why their equipment didn’t work properly – I’m sure they’d find that funny that a person would ask that question about the equipment they’re supplied with. The Supreme Court decision you refer to does not say that handcuffing any person was a breach of their constitutional rights, it said that a policy of handcuffing every arrested person was not best practice. Any police force around the world would find it ridiculous to think that arrested persons wouldn’t be handcuffed – for the safety of the police officer and the arrested person as they never know the state of mind of the person or whether they are likely to turn violent at some stage. Gardai need to protect themselves from assault and not handcuffing arrested person seems ludicrous to me, unless they were a child. Too many people now jump in with this corruption against AGS allegation at the first opportunity without considering the ramifications of such an allegation. Are the Gardai perfect? Obviously not, but because a loudmouth TD cries foul about what she says wasn’t a lawful arrest do we automatically point the finger at at Gardai about corruption? A dangerous precedent.
@John… staging an arrest John. Do you really believe that? You’re a naive individual. True believerism is a nasty aul dose.
She’ll be in the slammer herself soon enough.
And that’s why she is trying to deflect attention from herself. She is adopting the tried and trusted Shinner trick of deflection.
She is voluntary rejecting the fine for Shannon airport so how is she distracting from herself? If she wanted to distract from that issue she would pay the fine and issue closed
and your opinion matters because you have mastered the art of setting of setting up fake twitter accounts to troll…..now thats a pain.
I could mock you on your stutter but I won’t.
use one of the other fake accounts ye have…looks better
If I had the money I would pay the fine myself. Brave woman !
Your a pain in da pole
All the fail gael /liebour slime bags very quiet on the €150 million fraud involving their buddy Denis
She won’t pay the fine because she knows she will only do a few hours in prison for non payment. If she thought she would do the full 30 days she would pay for sure. She is full of it. Only lookin for cheap publicity out of this.
Somebody’s telling porkies somewhere! And it seems the guards have documents to prove its not them. GSOC’s telling the minister they’re happy with the level of cooperation they’re getting from the guards. Who does that leave…………?
It has to make ya wonder about the accuracy of other ‘revelations’ and ‘conspiracies’ tweedle dee and tweedle dum are spouting under dail privilege……
But please, by all means, continue to treat this as the political football it absolutely is not. The polls are the correct place to resolve such issues, corrupt policing harms everyone equally, though maybe you are simply too short-sighted to see that. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before.
Hopefully you won’t have to experience Niemöller’s regret, hopefully when they come for you there will still be somebody to speak out.
I’m not holding my breathe though.
John Considine you can tell there was a lot of gardai reading your comments with all the red thumbs you are getting they are great for sticking up for themselves even when they know that they are wrong
John Considine, you clearly made a decision to believe one version of events about what’s true & untrue about the level of co-operation from the Gardai in the GSOC investigation into Clare Daly’s arrest – but herself, Wallace and GSOC refuse to say when the letter was sent – so who is being economical with the truth here? It’s seems clear that the Gardai directly involved in the arrest have made statements and it is also clear that the lack of co-operation from AGS is coming from people at Superintendent level or higher. Will they be the subject of a disciplinary sanction within AGS? I think we all know that’s not going to happen, that only comes to the lowest rank in the force. It is obvious that the ones with the political pull are the ones who have been promoted at least 3 times to reach Superintendent or higher and that’s where any hint of corruption lies in the force as a whole – not with the Gardai on the street – not that there’s many of them these days.
The old keystone cops are very practised liars. Ask any lawyer on their antics in courthouses across the land. Stitch you, stitch me squire. Ireland a great little country to do corruption in.
And the legal profession has proven itself to be beyond reproach time & time again.
She looks constipated
Hardly. She talks a lot of crap.
unlike a renua/young FG troll like yerself Paul; in years to come you’ll always be remembered for the brave act of setting up fake accounts on twitter to troll….truely a giant amongst us…
I have 1 Twitter account and I use my own name. Also I despise renua. But think what you like.
“Hardly. She talks a lot of crap.”
Ha! That is funny in fairness – and I happen to like Clare Daly.
I don’t think the Garda like been policed by others….
You obviously missed the part about all the Gardaí involved fully cooperating.
Allegedly…
They dont like being policed period.
May as well go full red.
They don’t like policing either..
Isn’t it a funny world. Within 24 hours we have an elected representative calling for the law, rules and procedures to be applied. Then we have the same representative, now a convicted criminal, publicly staying that she will not comply with or be bound by the law and pay a Court ordered fine. I could say it’s one rule for her and another for everyone else. However it’s worse than that, the utter hypocrisy of it aside what’s really worrying is the amount of idiots that think this vacuous waste of space is some sort of reforming political messiah. The only thing that Daly has achieved in her term of office is to run up a nice bill for the tax payer with her exorbitant salary and expenses. She’s a champagne socialist and a person with an agenda who even in relation to this story doesn’t appear to be telling the complete truth. I sincerely hope and would be reasonably confident that the people who voted for her will not make the same mistake again and send this clown back to the hole from where she came.
Garda “Of course we are ”
Non existent investigative journalist “yes but at what pace”?
Garda “no comment”
Oh look!…..a topic for Government supporters to troll!……..(they felt a bit left out not being able to troll the IBRC topics about the corruption of their masters.)
So a full scale, cross city operation Garda surveillance operation was put in place to take down Daly.
Conspiracy theorise much.
And they must have covertly injected the hot whiskey into her too, which allowed the Gardaí who stopped her to suspect drink driving. Can’t completely blame the guards though, Army Intelligence has to have been involved too.
Thank God we have Mick Wallace on the job though. I feel so safe at night knowing he’s around. His flowing silver fetlocks flicking in the breeze.
W*nkshaft!
If this is the fit up that some people claim it to be, then why didn’t the Gardaí go the whole hog & fake a positive result? Are we to believe that they were corrupt enough to put significant resources into mounting a citywide surveillance operation, but not corrupt enough to falsify the print out?
Someone saw her having a drink, someone tracked her across the city, someone was waiting when she made a simple driving error, someone put her in handcuffs and rang the press…..it has taken over two years to investigate this….someone ain’t cooperating
Daly said she had a drink in a friend’s house; are we to believe that there was a garda peering in the window at her to see if she’d had alcohol, then followed her around in the hope that she’d make a mistake? Given that the gardaí can stop a vehicle at any stage, why would they have waited until she went the wrong way down a one-way street if they’d been following her?
No surprise.
A HSE psychologist can label anyone “drunk” without any proof and then put it as fact to any court and no one is allowed to dispute it. The supposedly drunk human had never drank in her entire life.She asked for Gardai to come and do test in their offices, but this was not allowed.The now famous psychologist said she would not be mentioning it in court but she did.
Never ever trust and always get another opinion if possible
Sure they are
The Star’s Michael O’Toole tweeted Wallace earlier asking him to confirm that the GSOC correspondence he was referring to was two years old; Wallace confirmed this. So the accusation that Gardaí have not co-operated is two years old and we’ve no information about the supposed foot-dragging that’s up to date, aside from the GRA absolutely refuting the allegation. It’s looks like the GRA and the Gardaí involved have been vindicated. It’s funny how Wallace chose to mention this at a time when he’s been convicted of a criminal offence. I wonder how much coverage this will be given here?
Clare Daly and Mick Wallace should go to jail if they do not pay their fines for breaking the Law!
Mick Wallace is a Tax Cheat!
Tax Cheats should not be allowed into Dáil Éireann
Two goddamn years??
Wouldn’t be like a td to tell unfounded blatant lies in the Dail with no proof of what they are saying
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