McDowell confirms no action yet taken on foot of Dean Lyons report
Issued : Saturday 24 February, 2007
Almost seven months after he received the final report of the Birmingham
Commission into the Dean Lyons case and in the same week in which a journalist
was arrested for publishing extracts from the document, the Minister for
Justice, Michael McDowell, has confirmed to me in a series of written replies to
Dail questions that no action has yet been taken on foot of the report.
The Minster's replies indicated that no disciplinary action had been taken against any of the Garda officers involved in the case. Minister McDowell also confirmed that new Garda Disciplinary Regulations which he announced last May and which he said would be in operation prior to the Dail summer recess last year, have still not come into effect.
It appears that the only action taken on foot of the report was that the Garda Commissioner appointed an Assistant Commissioner to assess the impact of the report with a view to recommending remedial action where necessary. In a reply to me this week, Minister McDowell confirmed that matter was not yet completed, but that the Commissioner was 'expecting to receive a report on the matter in the near future'.
Many people will be struck by the contrast between the Garda resources allocated to seeking those responsible for the premature publication of the report and the utter failure to take any action based on the report itself.
We must never lose sight of the fact that the savage murder of Sylvia Sheils and Mary Callinan in Grangegorman in 1997 led to a terrible double injustice. The first injustice was to Dean Lyons who was charged with a murder he could not have committed. The second was to the families of the two victims who have yet to see the murderer brought to account for what were particularly violent and gruesome murders.
The relatives of Dean Lyons, Sylvia Sheils and Mary Callinan have all been badly let down by the failure of Minister McDowell to act on this case.
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