Updated at 10.52pm
GARDA COMMISSIONER MARTIN Callinan has said he’s satisfied that the force didn’t bug the offices of GSOC.
Speaking alongside Justice Minister Alan Shatter at an event in Templemore today, Callinan said:
“I want to unequivocally state that at no stage was any member of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission or any of its members under surveillance by An Garda Síochána.”
“That was not the case and I relayed that to the Chairman of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission when he came to see me last Tuesday and the Chairman in turn assured me that having carried out their investigations that there were no matters of concern arising for An Garda Síochána”
Asked how he could be sure that no ‘rogue elements’ engaged in spying, Callinan said:
“Certainly it’s the case that no member of the Garda Síochána — I am very very satisfied — no member of An Garda Síochána was involved in surveillance of any kind in relation to either the premises or the members of staff of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission.
He said that if anybody had any information “that some so-called rogue member of the Garda Síochána or indeed anybody else” had any suspicion that such surveillance was taking place “then I would be very very interested and so would every single member of An Garda Síochána”.
Today’s comments are the force commander’s first public statement on the issue since the story broke last Sunday.
Callinan had put out a press release on Monday night, taking issue with an earlier statement from GSOC, and saying it contained “a clear indication that An Garda Síochána was in some way suspected of complicity in this matter”.
The Commissioner’s comments today come in the wake of Shatter’s appearance on Prime Time last night — in which he declined to state explicitly that he had confidence in GSOC chairman Simon O’Brien.
In the course of his TV interview last night, the Justice Minister also took issue with O’Brien’s public testimony on the issue, and said the GSOC chairman’s comments at an Oireachtas committee on Wednesday diverged from what he had been told in a meeting at the start of the week.
‘Different answers’
Shatter initially called O’Brien in for a briefing on the issue the Monday, a day after reports that the agency had been bugged last year first appeared in The Sunday Times.
GSOC confirmed that night that a UK security firm had carried out a sweep of its Abbey Street HQ in 2013, and that three “technical and electronic anomalies” had been found.
The Minister told the Dáil on Tuesday:
“It has not been established that the offices of the ombudsman commission were under surveillance.”
However — on Wednesday, O’Brien told the Public Oversight Committee:
“I certainly suspect or potentially suspect that we may have been under some form of surveillance.”
Shatter said last night that the information he gave the Dáil had been “based entirely” on the oral and written briefing he’d received from O’Brien on Monday and on GSOC’s press release issued that night.
“In the context of that information, the conclusion was that there was no definitive evidence of any unauthorised technical or other surveillance,” Shatter said.
And when asked about the apparent differences between the two interpretations of what had happened:
“I’m very conscious that Mr O’Brien and the other members of GSOC were at a committee meeting for up to four hours and a series of questions were put to them.
“During the course of that event there were different answers given with regard to particular issues.
“Indeed, some of what was said during the course of that seemed to me to be a little confused or contradictory.”
Shatter stressed that there had been nothing in the oral or written briefing or in the press statement that indicated O’Brien or other GSOC members believed they had been spied upon.
He also said he had written to the Commission, asking it to clarify if it believed it was under surveillance.
Written briefing
The written briefing document has been sent on to members of the public oversight panel — and speaking this morning, chairman of that committee Padraig MacLochlainn said “the concerns that I had have only heightened having read that briefing”.
“In the account given by the minister, he clearly sought to talk down the three identified anomalies or threats,” McLochlainn told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland.
“He used a number of terms that were clearly seeking to say ‘nothing to see here, move on’.”
McLochlainn, who is also the Sinn Féin justice spokesman, said he was “stunned” at difference in what Shatter had told the Dáil and what the GSOC chairman told the committee the following day.
Confidence
In the course of last night’s interview, Shatter was also asked whether he had confidence in O’Brien as chairman of the agency.
He replied:
“I have confidence in GSOC.
I appreciate that members of GSOC had a four hour hearing in front of an Oireachtas Committee at which very many members of that committee put questions to them.”
Asked again about the issued today he said:
I have confidence in GSOC, I have confidence in the GSOC Commission. I’m not going to differentiate between individual members because it’s the commission and they make decisions collectively.
Asked a second time by RTÉ’s Paul Reynolds if he had confidence in the three members of the commission, Shatter said:
“I’ve confidence in the members of the commission, I have confidence in GSOC, but I’m not going to distinguish in any shape or form between individual members. They are a collective group, they perform as a commission, they don’t effectively or essentially perform on an individualised basis.”
First published 1:39pm
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