The former head of the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (GNBCI) has denied suggestions that he pursued Limerick Garda Superintendent, Eamon O\u2019Neill, on suspicion of alleged interference in road traffic summonses because he had failed to bring charges against him on other matters.<\/p>\n
Retired Detective Chief Superintendent Walter O\u2019Sullivan also denied allegations put to him that he had previously asked another Garda if he could quash a road traffic summons issued to a motorist.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan rejected this allegation put to him by Felix McEnroy, senior counsel for Supt O\u2019Neill, and said the garda was \u201cmistaken\u201d and that he had \u201czero recollection\u201d of it happening.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan was giving evidence on behalf of the prosecution in the trial of retired Superintendent Eamon O\u2019Neill, and four serving Gardai, at Limerick Circuit Criminal Court.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The four garda\u00ed on trial with Mr O\u2019Neill are his partner, Sgt Anne Marie Hassett, Sgt Michelle Leahy, Garda Tom McGlinchey, and Garda Colm Geary.<\/p>\n
The five accused deny a combined total of 39 counts of engaging in conduct tending or intended to pervert the course of justice in respect of road traffic summonses.<\/p>\n
The court has heard evidence that Mr O\u2019Sullivan led officers on a dawn raid of Supt O\u2019Neill\u2019s home in Co Clare in May 2019.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan was met at the front door of the home by Sgt Hassett who was \u201cupset\u201d and she asked the GNBCI officers to take off their \u201cGARDA\u201d raid jackets.<\/p>\n
The witness said he asked where Eamon O\u2019Neill was, and he was told he was asleep upstairs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was 6:38am when garda\u00ed entered the house.<\/p>\n
Supt O\u2019Neill was brought to Athlone Garda Station where he was questioned on suspicion of breaching section 62 of the Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na Act, disclosing information that could be harmful to an ongoing Garda investigation.<\/p>\n
Supt O\u2019Neill was released without charge and the DPP later directed he had no case to answer.<\/p>\n
A number of mobile phones that were seized as part of the search at Supt O\u2019Neill\u2019s home, some belonging to Supt O\u2019Neill, and one phone belonging to Sgt Hassett, were examined by GNBCI.<\/p>\n
Following the seizure of the phones, other phones were seized from other garda\u00ed, including Garda McGlinchey, Garda Geary, and Sgt Leahy, as well as a number of citizens who had allegedly sought help from Supt O\u2019Neill in quashing summonses.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan denied suggestions that his first investigation into Mr O\u2019Neill, which lasted two years, was \u201ca significant failure\u201d, and that the second probe was an \u201cattempt to distract away from the failure of the first investigation\u201d, and a face-saving exercise to prevent another \u201cscandal\u201d in the garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan agreed that he had been generally aware of previous scandals in the force involving penalty points statistics, after concerns had been raised by the Central Statistics Office over figures provided by An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na.<\/p>\n
Later, Mr O\u2019Sullivan agreed with senior prosecuting counsel Carl Hanahoe that any suggestion the second investigation was a \u201ctag onto the first investigation” is nonsense.<\/p>\n
Det Chief Supt O\u2019Sullivan also gave evidence that he contacted a named senior ranking garda, now retired, and informed them they were under suspicion for attempting to pervert the course of justice by contacting Eamon O\u2019Neill and seeking to have summonses quashed in two separate cases.<\/p>\n
Text messages sent by the high-ranking officer\u2019s mobile phone to Supt O\u2019Neill were shown in court.<\/p>\n
The first message sent to Supt O\u2019Neill was the name and address of a citizen to which Supt O\u2019Neill replied: \u201cwho is he?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The messenger replied:<\/p>\n
\n Eamon, that\u2019s a fiend of mine, stopped for a seat belt in Oola. Could you enquire? If it\u2019s too late, no problem.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
When asked by Supt O\u2019Neill\u2019s barrister what he interpreted the message to mean, Mr O\u2019Sullivan replied: \u201cMy interpretation is that it\u2019s to intervene and to stop a matter.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan said he phoned the high-ranking garda and told them they were a \u201csuspect\u201d in the probe.<\/p>\n
Under questioning, Mr O\u2019Sullivan agreed he sent the high-ranking officer a list of dates and text messages and call logs between his phone and Supt O\u2019Neill\u2019s phone in respect of the matters.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan said the high-ranking officer\u2019s phone was not seized nor where they ever charged with any offence.<\/p>\n
The high-ranking officer was interviewed for 23 minutes under caution at GNBCI headquarters by Mr O\u2019Sullivan and Assistant Commissioner John O\u2019Driscoll, and gave \u201cshort answers\u201d to questions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
John Byrne, counsel for Garda McGlinchey, put it to Mr O\u2019Sullivan that his client handed over his phone and pin code, and was questioned for over four hours in a garda station, while the high-ranking garda was interviewed in a \u201ccosy\u201d office for 23 minutes, and their phone was not seized.<\/p>\n
Mr O\u2019Sullivan said there was \u201cnothing cosy\u201d about being interviewed under caution, and he denied suggestions by Mr Byrne that he had not robustly interviewed the senior officer.<\/p>\n
The four garda\u00ed on trial were asked to meet with GNBCI detectives prior to their arrest, and handed over their mobile phones and pin codes and engaged in interviews under voluntary caution.<\/p>\n
The trial, which is in its fourth week, continues on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former head of the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (GNBCI) has denied suggestions that he pursued…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,7782,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-175696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-courts","9":"tag-gardai","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-news","13":"tag-top-stories","14":"tag-topnews","15":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}