THE authors of the report state that they have tried to establish "to the fullest extent possible" the sequence of events surrounding the failure to remove Judge Lynch from the Special Criminal Court.
However, the report shows that the inquiry team had difficulties following the "paper trail" of crucial documents in the affair. In one instance the trail "ran into the sand". In another it "disappears from view".
The first critical document was notification of the Government decision on August 1st last to delist the judge. Notice of the decision arrived the next day in the Minister's private office, where five copies were prepared. One went to the Secretary of the Department, one to the Minister's programme manager, and three copies were sent down to three officials in the courts division.
An assistant secretary in the courts division said he was on leave at the time. When he saw the note on his return, he assumed someone else would have taken action on it.
A principal at the courts division who also got a copy of the decision said he had been working there for only a few weeks, was uncertain of procedures and so passed the note on to a more junior official. He said he was not sure who he had passed it to, but mentioned three possible names.
"We interviewed these three persons in turn and each of them maintained with great earnestness that they had absolutely no recollection of having been given the decision," the report says.
The third official in the courts division, an assistant principal, said she gave her note of the decision to someone else, and named as the possible recipient one of those three who had earnestly denied receiving it.
The report says in this way the effort to follow the trail of theses notes of the Government decision "ran into the sand". Two senior officers in the courts section couldn't remember to whom they gave their copy, and no one admitted receiving one. This was a "very unsatisfactory" outcome to this part of the investigation, the report says.
The second important document was an October 2nd letter from the Attorney General asking if Judge Lynch had been notified of his removal from the court.
This letter was sent by the Minister's private secretary to the principal in the personnel division. She received it about October 7th, and sent it to the courts division.
The assistant principal who received it there said he was busy dealing with 12 parliamentary questions at the time. He decided to concentrate on them first. An acting higher executive officer returned from leave on October 13th, and the next day tee assistant principal gave him the letter and instructed him to prepare letters to the judge and the Circuit Court.
Over the following eight days draft letters were prepared and amended. But final versions had not emerged by the time the political crisis had begun. The final letters were issued on November 7th.
Asked why this process took 50 long, the principal at the courts division said he read the Attorney General's letter and "he did not consider it called for any urgent action". The assistant principal said it "did not strike him" that no one had told the judge of the decision.
Meanwhile, on October 10th the judge had sent in his own reminder. What became of it is "a mystery", the report says. The letter was marked "personal" and was delivered to the Minister's constituency office, where an assistant to the Minister opened it. She said she thought she gave it to the Minister's private office, but the private secretary there said he did not receive it. "At this point it disappears from view," the report says. The letter from the judge somehow ended up in a file in the courts section, but no one could tell the inquiry team how it got there.
The Attorney General sent a second letter to the Minister, on Friday November 1st. She read it on Tuesday November 5th. It was this letter which led to action and, eventually, the inquiry itself. The next day someone - not named - showed the judge a faxed copy of Iris Oifigiuil which recorded the decision to delist him from the court. "This was his first notification, formal or informal, of his removal from the Special Criminal Court," the report says.