I wonder how many of today’s commentators, including politicians, have actually read the contents of the report of the tribunal of inquiry into the Kerry Babies case which was presided over by my father, the late Kevin Lynch.
There has been criticism aplenty of my father’s character. Criticism also of the so-called inquisition of Joanne Hayes and criticism of the adversarial approach that was adopted by the tribunal. But little of it stands up to close scrutiny.
Kevin Lynch has been portrayed as pitiless, illiberal and misogynistic. There have been suggestions that the tribunal was somehow conducted in the manner of a medieval inquisition.
In reality, my father was right-minded, highly principled and his own man. His creed derived from commonsense and he was the antithesis of pomposity. He always sought out the truth. His outward character was courteous and of low profile.
In private, he was the embodiment of good company and benign droll humour. As a quiet-living man, he did not enjoy the publicity that the tribunal brought. The four tenacious women in his family, my late mother, myself and my sisters disavow purported charges of misogyny against him. Perhaps the biggest criticism levelled against him was the way Joanne Hayes was treated as a witness. It has been claimed in recent weeks that the tribunal was an inquisition into her private life with no equivalent focus on the actions of the gardaí. In fact, the tribunal examined a total of 61,000 questions asked to 109 witnesses over the course of 77 days.
The question that should really be asked is why the the media chose to focus on Joanne Hayes and not on the actions of the gardaí because they all took their stand in the witness box.
The first point to make with regard to the treatment of Joanne Hayes is that the terms of reference of the tribunal required that the facts and circumstances that led to the bringing of criminal charges against her in May 1984 should be established.
With regard to the way the hearings were conducted, the tribunal adopted the same procedure for hearing evidence and submissions of the parties as was adopted by the Whiddy and the Stardust tribunals.
Cross-examination
All witnesses were called and examined in chief by counsel for the tribunal. The witnesses were then available for cross-examination by all other parties. At the conclusion of the cross-examination, by other parties, counsel for the tribunal had a right to re-examine the witnesses on a cross-examination basis.
The only charges to be examined by the tribunal were the charges made by the Hayes family against the gardaí. The gardaí were defending these allegations.
Everyone involved in the tribunal, including the Hayes family, were well aware that counsel for the gardaí would necessarily cross-examine Joanne Hayes about her sexual life and activity.
The Hayes family had the benefit of legal representation yet they did not seek to have her evidence taken in private.
But the main reason why the cross-examination of Joanne Hayes and other members of the family was necessarily prolonged and adversarial in nature was that he found the family had compromised their credibility.
Chapter 17 of the tribunal report goes into detail on the credibility of members of the Hayes family, with particular emphasis on Mary Hayes as head of the family. On page 54, the tribunal states that the evidence given by Joanne Hayes was false.
The other criticism levelled at my father is that the tribunal did not get to the bottom of how false confessions were obtained by the gardaí from the Hayes family. Chapters 19 to 30 clearly illustrate how it happened. It is very obvious that a combinational cover-up, lack of knowledge by members of the Hayes family of the whereabouts of Joanne Hayes’s baby, the pure coincidence of the birth of the Tralee baby and the discovery of the Cahersiveen baby resulted in the confessions. That the gardaí carelessly failed to find the Tralee baby put pressure on Joanne Hayes to confess. The confessions contain large elements of the truth of what happened to the Tralee baby transposed to the Cahersiveen baby. Evidence to this effect was given at the tribunal which by that stage had moved to Dublin Castle, and public and media interest was on the wane.
Whilst all the 28 gardaí were in the witness box in the course of the tribunal and were subject to lengthy cross-examination, the media didn’t report on them to the same extent as they did on the Hayes family.
Good name
It didn’t make for as good a story. The public were not engaged in important matters of establishing facts such as the layout of Tralee Garda station and the initialling of witnesses’ statements but they were very taken with what went on out on the farm in Abbeydorney.
Many lawyers at the time agreed that my father was correct in the use of the “adversarial” system. Because of it, he ended up with the evidence to find that the Hayes family had not told the truth and the gardaí had botched the investigation.
I would finally point out that it is a fact that, after the passage of 33 years, no subsequent legal proceedings were ever taken to overturn the findings in this report or with regard to the conduct of the hearing either in this jurisdiction or to the European Court of Human Rights.
The reason is that the findings are perfectly correct. The report is scrupulous and conscientious in its analysis of the evidence. Every finding of fact is supported by reference to extracts from cross-examination, statements and exhibits.
Now that my father is dead, having spent a lifetime of dedication to the search for truth and justice throughout his career, it is disappointing that others seek to take his good name.
Mary Lynch is the daughter of the late Supreme Court judge, Kevin Lynch