Nothing special about family's complaints, tribunal told
A former top official with the Garda Complaints Board today said there was nothing special about a string of accusations received by the office in 1997 about alleged garda misconduct in Donegal.
Nine complaints lodged up to September of that year by the McBrearty family accused officers of intimidation or harassment following the killing of Raphoe cattle dealer Richie Barron.
Publican Frank McBrearty Senior claims his family, business and staff were targeted by gardaí over the death, with his son and nephew wrongly suspected.
Brian O’Brien, now retired Deputy Chief Executive of the Board, told the Morris Tribunal that there was nothing about the complaints that stood out in his mind at that time.
“I have been retired for six years,” he told tribunal barrister Tony Barr SC. “These complaints were lodged nearly 10 years ago.
“Were it not for this tribunal I would have had a vague recollection of them. They were fairly normal type complaints.
“Was there anything special about them? There wasn’t… My recollection of how I felt in 1997 was that I wasn’t particularly conscious of them, I certainly wasn’t conscious of them as a group,” he said.
The tribunal has reached its final module and is investigating the conduct of the Garda Complaints Board in probing complaints from the McBrearty family and others in Donegal.
Frank McBrearty Junior and his cousin Mark McConnell were wrongly suspected of Mr Barron’s October 1996 death.
His body was found alongside a road outside Raphoe.
The McBreartys claim they were the victims of orchestrated garda harassment over the death, which the tribunal ruled was an unsolved hit-and-run and cleared the family of any involvement.
Mr O’Brien said that with the exception of a complaint concerning the arrest of one of the McBreartys in front of his children, he most likely would not have remembered the other allegations if it were not for the Morris Tribunal.
