A FORMER senior garda will be sentenced later this month for leaking a confidential government report to an Evening Herald reporter. Retired detective Robert McNulty (50) had been “obsessed” with restoring his reputation since coming under a 2006 public inquiry into the Dean Lyons case and had denied contacting reporter Mick McCaffrey.
Defence counsel Padraig Dwyer SC submitted that his client spoke of being “ridiculed” by the media and “jeered at by his own peers” and had disclosed the draft report, which cleared gardaí of misconduct surrounding Mr Lyons’s false murder confessions, in a “self-serving” bid to “vindicate his own good name”. Mr Dwyer submitted to Judge Desmond Hogan that his client had been “obsessed” with clearing his name and “jumped the gun” by divulging the report’s findings before its final draft was sent to the Minister for Justice.
McNulty of Boden Park, Rathfarnham, pleaded guilty to disclosing the draft report’s contents without consent on a date between July 10th and August 10th, 2006.
Det Supt John McMahon said the Government set up the Dean Lyons Commission of Investigation under George Birmingham SC (now Mr Justice Birmingham) to investigate Mr Lyons’s false confessions to two murders in the Grangegorman area in 1997.
Supt McMahon said McNulty and other colleagues had already been vindicated of misconduct in an internal inquiry and review. He said Mr Birmingham sent the first draft of the report to 15 people, including McNulty, between July 10th and 11th, 2006, before revising it, issuing a second draft and sending the final draft to the Minister on July 28th, 2006.
Supt McMahon said the Evening Herald published articles on August 10th and 11th, 2006 containing direct quotes from the first five pages of the report’s initial draft. Gardaí deduced that the quotes came from the first draft because the same content had been amended in later drafts.
McNulty confirmed he had received the confidential document, but denied he had contacted McCaffrey or other journalists when he spoke with colleagues investigating the leak. Supt McMahon said gardaí arrested McNulty and McCaffrey when they found evidence of calls between the men on the reporter’s phone.
He said gardaí matched the reporter’s fingerprints to three marks found on McNulty’s draft report. McNulty was charged with disclosing the report on October 15th, 2007 and suspended from the force since then until his retirement.
Supt McMahon agreed with Mr Dwyer that his client served with the Garda since 1978 and was a “good officer” who “worked well”.
Retired detective PJ Browne described McNulty, his friend and colleague of 20 years, as a “very commendable, very reliable” member of the force who came under enormous pressure from the Dean Lyons investigations.
Mr Browne revealed that McNulty “looked at himself as being under suspicion at all times” during the internal garda inquiry but “came back to himself” when the investigations were over.
He agreed with Mr Dwyer that the “pressure” returned when the public inquiry began. Mr Browne said: “My only belief is that he did it to clear his name,” when Mr Dwyer asked him his opinion on McNulty’s motive for the leak.
Mr Dwyer (with Breffni Gordon BL) submitted that McNulty, a married father-of-three with no previous convictions, had lost his reputation, job, health and the respect of his colleagues and the public. He submitted that the disclosure did not derail the commission or affect its work. The judge told Mr Dwyer he wished to read a psychiatrist’s report on McNulty and put the matter back for sentencing later this month.