The “him” is Sergeant Maurice McCabe, whose complaints of malpractice were inquired into at O’Higgins behind closed doors.

The claim was made bythe civilian head of humanresources in the force, John Barrett, who gave evidence to the Charleton Tribunal yesterday.

The claim is denied by the man Mr Barrett alleges uttered it, the civilian former chief administrative officer in the force, Cyril Dunne.

Judge Peter Charleton will have to determine who hebelieves, and if that is Mr Barrett, it points towards a strategy to go after Sgt McCabe by unjustified means.

Mr Barrett’s evidence was dramatic and delivered as the day’s hearings was nearly at an end.

The judge questioned him at some length about the claim, and it emerged that Mr Barrett says he told a chief super about the statement a few weeks after itoccurred, in May 2015.

That may well mean another witness will have to be called, just as the finish line for this module was in sight.

Last year, Mr Barrett clashed with then commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan at the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

He claimed to have briefed her extensively on financial irregularities at the Garda training college in Templemore in 2014. She claimed they had a casual conversation over a cup of tea. He had contemporaneous notes about a two-hour briefing. The PAC members were highly complementary about his evidence.

He had extensive paperwork at the PAC, but so far he has nothing to back up his dramatic claim at the Charleton Tribunal. He is likely to be tested on it today (Fri) by counsel for the rest of the Garda management. Mr Barrett is represented separately at the tribunal at his own request.

His evidence took thespotlight away from former justice minister Frances Fitzgerald, who earlier completed five and a half hours in the witness box.

Ms Fitzgerald must, on one level, wonder at how she has been dragged into this inquiry as to whether or not there was an attempt to smear Sgt McCabe over his complaints of malpractice.

Yet it was the slow response from her department to produce emails generated at the time of O’Higgins which hauled her to the castle. Late last year, the Government came close to collapse over the release and content of the emails Ms Fitzgerald received whenan aggressive strategy was adopted against Sgt McCabe at the private hearings of the O’Higgins commission in 2015.

Her failure to even inquire as to why such a course was being adopted, allied to the drip, drip release of the emails last autumn in response to parliamentary questions ended her ministerial career.

It also prompted her and officials in the department to belatedly make statements for the tribunal.

So was she vindicated, as she claimed she would be? There was certainly no smoking gun, although there was the faintest current of cordite from some of herresponses.

For instance, while sheinsisted at the height of the controversy last year that she had no recollection ofreceiving emails, she told the tribunal she made a conscious decision not to intervene. She didn’t reallyexplain how she could remember making a conscious decision about an email she couldn’t recall.

She also told Sgt McCabe’s counsel, Paul McGarry, that prior to taking up the justice portfolio in May 2014 she hadn’t heard any rumours about Sgt McCabe in relation to allegations of child abuse.

Those false and malicious rumours were floating about in the gardaí, media and politics at a time when the whole thing was a hot political potato. Yet Ms Fitzgerald was safely insulated from all that.

She also related how she had questioned Ms O’Sullivan about what had gone on at O’Higgins in May 2016, after the publication of a story in the Irish Examiner. The report highlighted that Ms O’Sullivan, as had at the commission the previous year, appeared to adopt a diametrically opposed attitude towards Sgt McCabe in private than she had done in public.

“I did put the direct question [to her],” Ms Fitzgerald told the tribunal. “Was one thing being said in public and another in private, and what she said to me was that she made it clear she had not questioned his integrity and had never accused him of malice and she wanted to treat all witnesses equally.”

There is absolutely noevidence that Ms Fitzgerald ever engaged in or advocated or was totally aware of any attempts to use unjustified means to discredit Sgt McCabe. To that extent, she has been vindicated, as she would put it.

Asked by her own counsel would she act the same way if the circumstances wererepeated, she gave the nod.

“It was the correct approach for me as Minister for Justice to take about a commission of investigation, politically and every other way,” she said.

However, there is no escaping the conclusion that she displayed a staggering incuriosity when informed of the aggressive strategytowards Sgt McCabe at O’Higgins. She had, in the previous months, been involved in ensuring that that turbulent sergeant was no longer targeted for harassment in his workplace. She had met him and taken on board his concerns about both malpractice and how he was being targeted.

Then, when informed that he may be under attack on another front, she didn’t as much as inquire from anofficial what exactly was going on.

Not just that, but when the matter became public a year later she made no connection between the story in the public domain and what she had been informed about at the outset of O’Higgins.

That incuriosity, allied to the political heat that built up in the face of continued denials by the department to the persistent questioning of Labour TD Alan Kelly last year, cost her her cabinet seat.

Vindicated, sure, but Ms Fitzgerald is highly unlikely to be reinstated.