Independent TD Mick Wallace has claimed that former Garda commissioner Martin Callinan was in An Garda Síochána's Phoenix Park headquarters on several days last week.
Speaking in the Dáil on Wednesday, Mr Wallace asked if Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Paschal Donohoe thought it appropriate that Mr Callinan and Garda Commissioner Nóirín O'Sullivan would have access to the whole apparatus of An Garda Síochána in their dealings with the Charleton inquiry, when such facilities would not be provided to Garda whistleblowers Sgt Maurice McCabe and Supt David Taylor.
The Wexford TD said Ms O'Sullivan "is a law unto herself" and that she had staffed an internal unit that would liaise with the inquiry with "personal friends and associates", including Det Supt Tony Howard and retired officers.
Mr Wallace said correspondence had been sent to Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald expressing reservations about Mr Howard.
"[Ms O'Sullivan] has brought back retired assistant commissioner Mick O'Sullivan and former chief superintendent Brendan Mangan.
"The Minister should ask the commissioner did she consult John Barrett at [Garda] human resources before she made appointments to her special unit to deal with the Charleton inquiry."
He said Mr Barrett wrote a letter to the force's head of legal affairs, Ken Ruane, "pointing out the corporate risk to An Garda Síochána in setting up this unit, staffed with personal friends and associates.
“He suggested a firm of outside solicitors should be brought in to act as a conduit between An Garda Síochána and the Charleton inquiry, but he was ignored.”
Discipline papers
Mr Wallace also highlighted the case of a female garda who would later on Wednesday collect another set of discipline papers in a carpark in Naas, Co Kildare, as part of an ongoing campaign by Garda management over an incident that happened 17 years ago.
He said the garda was being disciplined for failing to record a reported crime on the Pulse system and for failing to secure a statement.
He said: “She has been condemned, judged and isolated.”
He noted that she had spent 60 days in criminal court, but was unanimously found not guilty of any crime.
Mr Wallace said: “She is still subject to an ongoing campaign of internal disciplinary inquiries.
“Two internal inquiries are completed and three are ongoing.”
He said a decision in 2016 which was signed by Ms O'Sullivan and Assistant Commissioner Michael Finn recommended that the garda retire or resign as an alternative to dismissal.
“These are the same people who have accepted over 14,000 errors ,” he said, referring to the number of motorists who have been wrongly summoned to court for road traffic infringements.
‘The force is in bits’
Mr Wallace said: “There is mayhem. The force is in bits. It’s falling down around our ear. The only one in the whole country that is supporting her is you, your Government.”
Mr Donohoe said he was “disturbed” by the facts that had emerged about the behaviour of members of the force, but said that “what is crucial now is that [the facts] are in the public domain and that they can be looked at in a transparent manner”.
He said the Government would “put in place a thorough and proportionate response to an issue that we know is causing such disquiet across the country”.
The Minister said the Government’s “overwhelming prerogative is the integrity and reputation of An Garda Síochána”.
He said the Government was now in consultation with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc) about “whether further powers are merited for that organisation to respond to the cultural change that we know is needed”.
