Radical change in Garda urged by judge

Barr remarks: Poor Garda structures, poor training and a failure by gardaí to appreciate the difficulties in dealing with a subject motivated by mental illness resulted in the fatal shooting of John Carthy, the chairman of the Barr tribunal told reporters yesterday.

Speaking at a press conference yesterday morning, Mr Justice Robert Barr said that the 27-year-old man's death was avoidable and should never have happened.

His greatest hope was that the report of the tribunal, published yesterday, would lead to a radical change in the Garda, particularly in the way they dealt with situations where a subject was motivated not criminally, but through illness.

"What I would like to see emerge from this report more than anything else is a restructuring of Garda command and procedures, particularly when the ERU is brought in to deal with grievous, dangerous situations such as what pertained at Abbeylara.

"This is what I would like to see more than anything else."

The tragedy of Mr Carthy's death came about primarily because of the inappropriate stationing of armed and unarmed officers.

"The real difficulty was that the road was cluttered with officers, armed and unarmed, uniformed and plainclothes, a number of which should not have been there at all," he said.

"In fact, none should have been there. The road should have been kept clear. There should never have been a possibility of a target being there which John Carthy might elect to fire at."

He said he accepted that the officer who fatally shot Mr Carthy, Garda (now Sergeant) Aidan McCabe, believed that he had no other option.

"The person who fatally shot him believed, and I have accepted the veracity of his evidence, that he had no alternative in saving the lives of officers on the road ahead of Mr Carthy, that he had no alternative to do what he did and fatally shoot him.

"That is the essence of the tragedy," Mr Justice Barr commented.

He said he believed that major lessons needed to be learned from what had happened at Abbeylara.