Former minister for justice Alan Shatter says he is entitled to an explanation on the approach adopted in the Guerin report on allegations of Garda misconduct. “My accusation is that of a fundamentally flawed preliminary inquiry and report and an unprecedented rush to judgment,” he said. The report, by Seán Guerin SC, led to Mr Shatter’s resignation as minister for justice.
Mr Shatter was speaking in the Dáil during a debate on the report by former High Court judge Mr Justice John Cooke into alleged surveillance of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC).
He said he believed most people would regard him, as the then minister for justice, as a person who could have provided relevant assistance. He said fair procedures required that Mr Guerin should have interviewed him or, at the very least, communicated his concerns and questions to him in writing.
This, said Mr Shatter, would have afforded him the opportunity to address them and also to address his draft conclusions which he had to know would render his continuing in office as minister untenable.
“For my own part, I never anticipated that a practising senior counsel, as to independently consider the serious issues detailed in his terms of reference, could or would so ignore basic principles of constitutional and natural justice and fair procedures which have been repetitively pronounced upon and endorsed by our courts at the highest level,” he added.
"These principles are crucial to the rule of law and ignoring them places in peril a value system crucial to the wellbeing of all our citizens and all who reside in the State. To ignore them is to endorse the creation of kangaroo courts as dramatically depicted in Kafka's book The Trial."
He said that as a prosecuting counsel, Mr Guerin must know that the manner in which he conducted his role, and some of the conclusions reached by him, would not withstand court scrutiny.
Mr Shatter said there was an extraordinary and stark contrast between the approach of Mr Justice Cooke and Mr Guerin in their dealings with the GSOC and the manner in which they conducted their inquiries. “I am very puzzled as to why Seán Guerin did not take the additional time necessary to properly complete his work and why he rushed to judgment,” he added.
Mr Shatter said the matters investigated by the Cooke report first came to light in a newspaper article last February. He welcomed Mr Justice Cooke’s findings that the article contained “misinformation” and that “it is clear that the evidence does not support the proposition that actual surveillance of the kind asserted took place and much less that it was carried out by members of the Garda Síochána”.
