Gerald Kean tribunal hearing adjourned after letter evidence

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

The Disclosures Tribunal heard evidence about a draft letter prepared by former garda commissioner Martin Callinan for solicitor Gerald Kean. The proceedings were reported on 17 April 2018.

Detective Superintendent Frank Walsh met Kean on 12 February 2014, two weeks after Kean criticised Sergeant Maurice McCabe on the Marian Finucane programme. The tribunal heard that Walsh conveyed Callinan’s draft response to Kean and that four paragraphs from it were included in Kean’s reply to McCabe.

Tribunal chairman Mr Justice Peter Charleton described the commissioner preparing a draft letter in a private matter between two citizens as “really, really, really strange”. Walsh said the meeting was not clandestine and that the documents’ presence before the tribunal showed there had been no attempt to conceal them. Charleton challenged that account, saying the commissioner, Walsh and Kean had not told the tribunal and that counsel had found the documents by searching through tens of thousands of records.

The tribunal had adjourned and was due to resume on 30 April 2018.