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A UK POST OFFICE investigator has denied claims he and others “behaved like Mafia gangsters” who were looking to collect “bounty with the threats and lies” from subpostmasters.
More than 700 subpostmasters, who are charged with operating individual post office branches, were convicted on charges including false accounting and theft when it appeared that money was missing from branches.
However, it later emerged that the discrepancies were due to an issue with the service’s IT software.
Stephen Bradshaw, who has been employed at the Post Office since 1978, submitted a witness statement to the Horizon IT inquiry in which he said: “I refute the allegation that I am a liar.”
He told the inquiry he was not “technically minded” and was not equipped to know whether there were bugs or errors in the Horizon system.
The witness began giving evidence today after being involved in the criminal investigation of nine subpostmasters, including Lisa Brennan, a former counter clerk at a post office near Liverpool, who was falsely accused of stealing £3,000 in 2003.
Bradshaw has also been accused by fellow Merseyside subpostmistress Rita Threlfall of asking her for the colour of her eyes and what jewellery she wore before saying: “Good, so we’ve got a description of you for when they come”, during her interview under caution in August 2010.
Another subpostmistress, Jacqueline McDonald, claimed she was “bullied” by Bradshaw during an investigation into a shortfall of more than £94,000.
In her interview with Bradshaw, which was read to the inquiry, McDonald was accused by the investigator of telling him a “pack of lies”.
The exchange between McDonald and Bradshaw, read by counsel to the inquiry Julian Blake, included the investigator saying: “Would you like to tell me what happened to the money?”
McDonald replied: “I don’t know where the money is I’ve told you.”
Bradshaw continued: “You have told me a pack of lies.”
McDonald said: “No I haven’t told you a pack of lies because I haven’t stolen a penny.”
Blake said the witness’s words sounded “somewhat like language you might see in a 1970s television detective show”.
Responding to McDonald’s allegations of his aggressive behaviour in his witness statement, Bradshaw said: “I refute the allegation that I am a liar.
“I also refute the claim that Jacqueline McDonald was bullied, from the moment we arrived, the auditor was already on site, conversations were initially (held) with Mr McDonald, the reason for our attendance was explained, Mr and Mrs McDonald were kept updated as the day progressed.”
The investigator added: “Ms Jacqueline McDonald is also incorrect in stating Post Office investigators behaved like Mafia gangsters looking to collect their bounty with the threats and lies.”
Blake showed Bradshaw his “self-appraisal” of McDonald’s case, in which the investigator said: “The offender pleaded guilty to false accounting but would not accept theft.
“I challenged the recommendations of the barrister and persuaded him that a trial would be necessary, as the reason given by the defendant, Horizon integrity, would have a wider impact on the business if a trial did not go ahead.”
Blake then asked the witness: “It seems, certainly from your own feedback, from your own appraisal, that you saw it as in some way career-boosting to press on with Ms McDonald’s case because of problems with the Horizon system having a wider impact on the business, do you not accept that?”
Bradshaw responded: “The issue would been discussed with the prosecution barrister – as you’re well aware, when you’re filling in one-to-ones, there’s always a flamboyant way of putting the words across.”
Throughout his witness statement, Bradshaw said his investigations had been conducted in a “professional” manner.
At the beginning of his evidence, Blake first asked the witness: “Do you think that you have given enough thought over the past 20 years as to whether you may have been involved in what has been described as one of the largest miscarriages of justice in British history?”
Bradshaw replied: “It would appear that through not being given any knowledge from top downwards that if any bugs, errors or defects were there it’s not been cascaded down from Fujitsu, the Post Office board down to our level as the investigations manager.
“I had no reason to suspect at the time that there was anything wrong with the Horizon system because we’d not been told.
“The investigations were done correctly.
“The investigations were done at the time, no problems were indicated by anybody that there was issues with the Horizon system.”
Bradshaw told the inquiry that a statement signed by him declaring the Post Office’s “absolute confidence” in the Horizon IT system was written by lawyers from the law firm Cartwright King.
The statement signed by the investigator in November 2012 said: “The Post Office continues to have absolute confidence in the robustness and integrity of its Horizon system.”
Asked if it was appropriate for him to declare “confidence” in the IT system in the 2012 statement, he said: “I was given that statement by Cartwright King and told to put that statement through.
“In hindsight…there probably should have been another line stating, ‘These are not my words’.”
Bradshaw was asked if, following the case of a subpostmaster named Khayyam Ishaq in 2013, having had “all those years of complaints about Horizon”, if he was not “at all concerned about the state of the Horizon system”.
The investigator, who was called as a witness in Ishaq’s trial, said: “I gave my evidence, I was cross-examined by the defence and nothing untoward came from it.”
Blake continued: “There was something untoward, there was a prosecution, a conviction …”
Bradshaw interjected: “At the time of the case, when I gave my evidence, there was nothing untoward that had come back to me in 2013 from the defence when cross-examined.”
The statutory inquiry, which began in 2021 and is chaired by retired judge Wyn Williams, has previously looked at the human impact of the scandal, the Horizon system roll-out and the operating of the system, and is now probing the action taken against subpostmasters.
The probe was established to ensure there is a “public summary of the failings which occurred with the Horizon IT system at the Post Office” and subsequently led to the wrongful convictions of subpostmasters.
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IW is not fit for purpose, creating more problems than solving.
@@mdmak33:
Celtic Anglian Water (CAW) have been the Operations and Maintenance Contractor at the Ringsend Waste Water Treatment Works since 1999.
@Tim Pot: So whats Irish Water for. Ah yes now i remember to hoover up more cash from the hard pressed public.
@Stephen Grehan: perhaps if the public had of actually paid their bills, and before anyone says it, the act creating Irish water removed previous revenue streams for Irish water treatment, then IW would actually have the money to upgrade the plant faster to solve the simple problem that Dublin is growing faster than the infrastructure can handle and has been doing so for years
@Vocal Outrage: not true. Funding was cut way before iw was established.
@Stephen Grehan:
They have spent less cash than the 31 authorities they replaced…
@@mdmak33: This is just another example of how we struggle to implement infrastructure, there literally isn’t a positive example in the country, maybe Education, but transport, health, housing, etc. We are a pretty good example of how not to do it. Ah well who wants to live on Dublin anyway, it’s a kip.
@Vocal Outrage: Even when IW set up,water services and infrastructure continued to be financed through the LGFs plus partial Exchequer funding into the LGF.
Following recommdations from Committee re Future Funding of Water …voted for and agreed in Dail certain changes were legislated for.On January 1st 2018 Motor tax is now being paid directly into the Exchequer and water services and infrastructure now paid by Exchequer funding.
The DBO contracts re Ringsend WWTW Extension had been in place since 1999& those contracts plus another 325 contracts were transferred to IW on 24/4/14.
In 2012 the Councils had 660 different contracts,schemes&water conservation projects!
@Vocal Outrage: Oh, that explains where all previous revenue went. By that logic we should all pay quadruple fees for TV licences, on the grounds that RTÉ would like to spend more money.
@thesaltyurchin: The EPA and the FSA are doing a good job. Credit where it’s due. Road safety’s improved thanks to the RSA. Em – okay, that’s all I can think of.
@thesaltyurchin: good point, but I heard (from teachers!) that we’re falling behind on the educational front also. So no good examples there. We’ve a good taxation infrastructure, if you’re a multinational I suppose :/
@Oscar: Yes,from 2008-2010 even with FF Government achieving 2/3rds adjustment required by Troika CAPITAL expenditure on water on water supply &waste water treatment was €2,17B.With FG Government in 2011, capital expenditure was slashed o €1,32B(2011-2013)!
@Fiona Fitzgerald: You’re right, I guess my sarcastic posting is more aimed at a government/organisational level, the people that are handed these buckets with holes are hardly the problem, and speaking from experience, (3rd level ed.) these people are usually doing way more than they signed up for just trying to deal with the tsunami of problems (Frustrating, because you can see how it could work really well and the government tell you that they want it to work really well but then the turn their backs and cover their ears,’ in my experience we need to run these institutions like businesses, not privatising but way more transparent, there’s no way you get a job at 20, do nothing for 40 years and get promoted along the way! It’s bonkers). As a young-ish country we don’t yet understand the value in ‘things’. At some point we will have to deal with our ‘Leprechaun economics’ or we’ll have no where to drive our brand new cars. (went off piste a little there).
“Plumes will continue to appear” …. why not say it as it is …. “shît will continue to spill”
@Declan O’Neill: plume? Sounds almost poetic…
What is the point of Irish Water? What do they do other than soundbite ridden press releases and driving around in taxpayer funded Audis?
@Shakka1244:
Incorporated in July, 2013 as a company under the Water Services Act 2013, Irish Water brought water and wastewater services of the 31 local authorities together under one national service provider. We are responsible for the operation of all public water and wastewater services including:
-Management of national water and wastewater assets
-Maintenance of the water and wastewater system
-Investment and planning
-Managing capital projects
-Customer care and billing
We are also responsible for all of the capital investment decisions and implementation of the capital programme delivery across the country.
@Tim Pot: Lately you are using the word we in most of your comments, so one can assume you work for Irish Water and hence the biased agenda.
@Stephen Grehan: or perhaps he was simply quoting from IWs mission statement, generally in quotes the words ‘I’ or ‘we’ are quite common
@Stephen Grehan:
its a direct copy and paste from the website stephan. feel free to do a background check.
@Tim Pot:
Thanks for that George Lee
Any hosebans …broken pipes.
On the horizon???
@Kerry Evans:
tend to be in the ground not on the horizon…
@Tim Pot: From 2008-2013(5 years) the Councils got 199 supplies off the EPA Remedial action lists from 339 supplies in 2008- 140 supplies in 2013.
Why did IW just get 61 supplies off the EPA Remedial action lists in 5 years?There’s still 60 supplies on the latest RAL on last Report this year & 63% of those supplies have THM exceedences.In August last year didn’t the European Commission take a case against Ireland re THMs!?Will IW have those supplies with THMs reduced to 20 supplies by end of 2019 as promised?
@Nuala Mc Namara: What are you asking him for? Maybe ask IW?
@Gavin Conran: Tim Pot knows…..
Can’t be too healthy living on that part of town with a questionable incinerator and a dodgy treatment plant close by.
@Candace:
Another fun fact of the day.
Incinerator plants emit less emmissions than euro 6 diesels..
@Tim Pot: who’s Peter Darvas and where does he say fact? He says widely held beliefs at least twice.
Who’s paying you to post this shite?
@Tim Pot:
I’ll just leave this here for you, Covanta can do no wrong.
https://www.no-burn.org/toxic-air-and-ash-emissions-from-u-s-covanta-and-wheelabrator-incinerators-dioxin-mercury-and-other-toxic-contaminants/
@Tim Pot: Here’s another fun fact for you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BowD6dAJKvo
@Hardly Normal:
his email is in the report you can ask him yourself.
i am not being paid to post this brown plume.
@Stephen Grehan:
Thanks stephan thats a good video.
1)cost of billing in 2015 was only covering itself as there was only a portion of the households paying at the time.
2)If Ireland would achieve even half the savings that scotland managed when they created a national utility then that could save 20% of total costs. However Mr. Donnely did not assume any increase in funding for services. As we now see is required.
@Tim Pot: you are stating his hypothesis as fact when he uses the words ‘widely held beliefs’ .
@Hardly Normal:
Might I ask why you are not as thoroughly verifying others statements on here?
anyway i’ll agree it’s not the most convincing paper. here is one from the US EPA instead. Again, waste to energy plants produce less emissions than diesel cars.
https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/nonhaz/municipal/web/html/airem.html
@Tim Pot: Donnellly’s figures were based on the fact that if every household in the country paid Irish Water it would barely cover the cost. At the time it was looking for around 260euro per year for the average household for starters. But hey lets face it we all know what happens with new charges (bin charge) in this country it skyrockets out of control and before long the cost will be 1000 to 2500euro per year and rising.
The only good thing about Irish Water is that it awakened people to the gross incompetence of politicians, cronyism, back hand deals and so on.
Make no mistake about it this will still be very much an issue when the next election comes around.
@Tim Pot: yours was the first, you stated it as fact when the author said it wasn’t. If others had put forward a link stating it was a fact and the first line in the link said it was a widely held belief I’d have done the same.
Truth is I didn’t click on the others because everyone can find a link supporting their agenda or personal beliefs and it just didn’t interest me all that much. Saying that the epa allow fracking to take place in America without a huge amount of grief so I wouldn’t take their word for gospel either.
@Hardly Normal:
ok so because the epa allow fracking, their recording of emissions data on municipal waste to energy plants must be flawed?
Come on that makes no sense.
@Tim Pot: ya, you’re right I ballsed up my point. Till next time Tim Pot :@
@Tim Pot:
1)If all households had paid IW charges,it would have just covered IW billing cost,& related costs.
2)How will billing for excessive water use be practical financially re cost involved when Ireland uses less water than many other European countries as was highlighted to Expert Commission on Water & Committee on Future Funding of Water?
3)There are just 600 water meters re water users in Scotland out of 2.4m households as they use district metering instead as they told Committee on Future Funding of Water so there are significant savings there as there isn’t the initial costs of instillation, maintenance and replacement costs.
Also water is paid for through the Council tax banding structure so affordability is an important factor for Scottish Water.Ireland formally paid for water services through motor tax revenue put directly into Local Government Fund into which the Exchequer put some funding into LGF also.So there was no costs involved re billing expenditure &related costs.
At end of 2017 there were 4300 staff re water services in Ireland:3,500 Local Authority staff +800 IW staff.IW said there would be a reduced workforce of 3,300 in a single utility which means loss of 1000 staff re water services ,a significant loss of experienced staff!
Aptly named area for this plant to be…
What worries me is that (correct me if I’m wrong here) two out of three spills were only reported because a private citizen spotted it with a drone, meanwhile IW are telling us all is well. I wonder was the brown river running the days when the drone enthusiasts were at home.
It’s not just near Ringsend. It’s a 5 mile radius of odour. Disgusting. The city smells like an open sewer.
@gerard carey: Really? You can smell it in the city? That is just all types of wrong.
@gerard carey: funny, I live and work within this 5 mile radius and can’t smell it
@Arya: no you cannot, there is more white coming from some people than the sewage plant.
@talkingsense: I can smell it in Clontarf, Rathmines, Monkstown, and all over the inner city, well the inner city could be the bags of rubbish strewn all over the place. Not sure.
@gerard carey: that’s the natural smell of Dublin
@gerard carey: funny how the smell seems to follow you around, odd that.
@Darius Guppy: Not as odd as your nose.
You might want to get that checked out. Nice teeth.
@Hardly Normal: Its fairly obvious in the IFSC.
@talkingsense: I live in Grand canal dock and can smell bad smell from the water
@gerard carey: it’s near Ringsend lol
@Sinéad Ní Ógáin: theres a run-off directly into the grand canal basin. Seems bizarre but apparently that’s true.
Reminds me of a song by Bagatelle.
Except that they could jump on a bus to Dún Laoghaire to escape the smell :-) Such progress!
Cover ups and lies to try and breath life in to IW and eventually allow the FFG to privatise water..
Two words spring to mind, brewery and pi?s up!
They can’t even get their euphemisms right. A “plume” is a feather or something resembling a feather, such as a helmet ornament or a “plume of smoke”. It goes upwards, not outwards. In this case, the correct euphemism would be a “brown fan”.
Suppose car tax will be increased again to fund the upgrade…
I can smell the bullsh*t from the constant press releases from here…….
What a joke . Thought Albania was the only country in Europe with open sewers
s b r s can be really tricky especially if there overloaded .
funny smell from ringsend ( * )
Sounds like m l s s
@Christopher Millar: mixed liquor suspended solids? Certainly looks like it
@Mary: your right mary prob 2 high I would waste a bit more ..
By plumes they mean tons of raw Shite.
This phenomenon is due to a overload of bullshit coming from the Dail mixing with hot air carried by the ffg winds.
You can smell the $hyte over in Sutton ffs
“Odour near ringsend.” Headline of the year!
I’m begining to think this is just a load of crap.
Correct mary
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