McDowell accused of playing blame game over McBrearty affair

Justice Minister Michael McDowell has been accused of trying to play the blame game by claiming that the McBrearty family should receive an apology not only from the current government but also from the Rainbow Coalition government of the mid-nineties.

McDowell today confirmed the McBrearty’s - whose members were found to have been framed for the murder of cattle dealer Richie Barron by certain gardai in Donegal - "were owed a solemn letter of apology by successive governments including the Rainbow Coalition in the mid-1990s."

In response, Frank Frank McBrearty Jr said: "Mr McDowell is playing the blame game now, blaming everybody except himself. He's trying to blame the Opposition," said Mr Mc Brearty.

Labour leader Pat Rabbitte, a member of the Rainbow Cabinet of the mid-nineties, said evidence to the Morris Tribunal showed that no minister or senior official was properly briefed on these issues until almost two years after the Rainbow had left office and Fianna Fail and the PDs were in government with Mr McDowell as Attorney General.

Mr McDowell has also been accused of trying to stop the setting up of the inquiry into the events in Donegal when he was the Attorney General.

Mr Rabbitte claimed that Opposition parties tried three times to have the tribunal's terms of reference extended in 2001 and 2002 but Government TDs defeated the proposals each time.

"If the minister is really serious about the dirt he is now seeking to throw at Opposition parties, he should welcome an impartial investigation. I therefore invite him, for a fourth time, to widen the tribunal's terms of reference so as to include an investigation of the role of the Department of Justice and of successive Ministers for Justice. "If he does not accept the invitation, then his present charges and threats levelled against the Opposition can be dismissed as worthless bully-boy posturing," said Mr Rabbitte.
Judge Frederick Morris said in last week's second interim report that the garda investigation of Mr Barron's death in 1996 was "prejudiced, tendentious and utterly negligent in the highest degree".

Superintendent Joseph Shelly and Detective Superintendent John McGinley, senior officers who were heavily criticised in the findings, will resign at the end of next month.
McBrearty commented: "That's not good enough. Those two gardai should be sacked. The person who is making them retire - [Garda Commissioner] Noel Conroy - should go along with them."

"I'm calling on the Government to set up an international taskforce to come in and investigate all these cases where false statements of confession were taken over the last 30 years."