O'Flynn unaware of Garda request

RTÉ journalist Mr Niall O'Flynn has said he would have expected his colleague, Mr Paul Reynolds, to tell him that RTÉ news was not naming Mr John Carthy, the man at the centre of the Abbeylara siege.

Mr O'Flynn broadcast Mr Carthy's name on RTÉ's Five Seven Live some 30 minutes before the 27-year-old was shot dead by gardaí.

RTÉ crime correspondent Mr Reynolds, who was at the scene, had decided not to broadcast Mr Carthy's name on RTÉ news bulletins. The tribunal has heard that Mr Reynolds was aware the Garda had asked for Mr Carthy's name not to be broadcast and said that Mr Carthy was mentally ill.

Mr O'Flynn told the tribunal yesterday that neither of these facts were told to him by Mr Reynolds in the hours leading up to Mr Carthy's death.

Mr O'Flynn said he spoke to Mr Reynolds on several occasions during the day and would have asked him if he had any new information about the situation.

Mr Reynolds did not volunteer any information that Mr O'Flynn did not already have he said.

The chairman of the tribunal, Mr Justice Barr, asked that, given Mr Reynolds was a senior news reporter, did it not cross Mr O'Flynn's mind that he might have been given confidential information from the Garda Press Officer, Supt John Farrelly.

"If he had he would have shared it with me," Mr O'Flynn said. He added that he was also a senior broadcaster and would have expected Supt Farrelly to pass information to him.

Counsel for the tribunal, Mr Michael McGrath, put it to Mr O'Flynn that Mr Reynolds had not told him, until minutes before the Five Seven Live broadcast, that Mr Carthy was not being named on RTÉ news.

Mr O'Flynn agreed he would have expected his colleague to share that information with him.

"It's an unfortunate state of affairs, but the explanation I would give was that it was not a particular issue for the newsroom, therefore it was not communicated to me."

Mr Justice Barr asked if Mr O'Flynn thought it relevant to the public to broadcast an interview that stated Mr Carthy's break-up with his girlfriend was because of his excessive drinking.

Mr O'Flynn said he took issue with the word excessive and said the interview was "much more light-hearted and innocuous" than the chairman was making it out to be. However, if he had been aware of the mental illness, or that the Garda negotiator had been told by the Carthy family to stay away from the issue, he would not have broadcast it. "If I had been told that there was a particular sensitivity about his relationship . . . I wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole."