THE MORRIS TRIBUNAL: The chairman of the Morris tribunal asked Ms Adrienne McGlinchey yesterday if she was a Walter Mitty character during questioning about statements she made to an internal Garda inquiry in 1999.
The key witness, Ms McGlinchey was also asked by Mr Justice Morris if she had been just spinning a line, trying to impress gardaí or making herself sound important. She denied it and, under cross-examination, also rejected a suggestion that her tribunal evidence that Det Garda Noel McMahon blackmailed her into planting bullets and fertiliser was "absolute fantasy".
The witness was cross-examined by Mr Brian Murphy, counsel for Det Garda McMahon, who went through the statements she made during 400 hours of interviews with gardaí carrying out the Carty inquiry into Garda corruption in Co Donegal. She had told the Carty inquiry she was an IRA informer and denied that later in the tribunal.
Mr Murphy asked her about her Carty statement that it had all started seven years before when she was going out with an IRA man from Rahan, where there was an IRA house.
Ms McGlinchey replied: :"I don't recall saying any of this. I don't accept I said half of this." It was put to the witness that in her statement given in July 1999 she said this IRA man took her to show her an arms bunker with new-looking weapons and that she told Det Garda McMahon but did not disclose the location. Did this not indicate she was an informer?
"I've never seen a bunker and I've never been in a bunker and God only knows why this is wrote here," she said.
The chairman said it was very hard for him to accept that she was taken down as saying this, unless she had said it. Did she say it? Ms McGlinchey said she did not remember saying it.
"Ms McGlinchey, I resisted using the words Walter Mitty for the last week or so. Are you something of a Walter Mitty character?" the chairman asked.
Ms McGlinchey replied: "No" She said she thought she was completely disorientated when she made that statement to the Carty inquiry.
Mr Murphy asked why the Carty inquiry would make up evidence to protect Det Garda McMahon when they were investigating him. "Isn't it something you just invented before you came here? There's no mention anywhere in your 150 pages of statements and interviews that Noel McMahon was telling you to give false information to \ Danny Kelly or \ Kevin Lennon."
He put it to the witness that "whatever possible mayhem you can cause to Noel McMahon you will do it".
Ms McGlinchey said Det Garda McMahon told her what to say to Garda Kelly and Supt Lennon.Asked why it was not in her 150-page Carty statement, she said they would have to ask the gardaí who took the statements.
Mr Murphy said that she had said at the tribunal that Det Garda McMahon was blackmailing her into doing more serious acts and planting bullets and fertilisers. "My client will say this is absolutely fantasy stuff and it never happened," Mr Murphy said. "It happened and we done it," Ms McGlinchey said.
Det Garda McMahon had told her to say she was an IRA informer at the Carty inquiry as the gardaí would leave her alone.
Asked if she was ever a member of the IRA or of Sinn Féin, she replied she never was. Mr Murphy said records from Letterkenny Garda station showed that on October 4th, 1989, she had a key to the Sinn Féin offices and went in and out that day. Ms McGlinchey strongly denied it.