KILDARE COLUMN: Maurice McCabe story a failure of journalism

I watched the fantastic Katie Hannon documentary on Maurice McCabe with great interest this week.

Partly because five years ago in 2013, I was part of a small group of Irish journalists in London who started following up the Garda whistleblower story, when pretty much every major news outlet in Ireland ran away from it.

So, excellent as the recent piece was, it was with some annoyance that the documentation of McCabe’s story — to this degree, and on primetime television — came about long after the scandal first came to light.

I first heard whispers that penalty points were being squashed on a pretty sizeable scale during a phone call with Sinn Fein TD Pádraig MacLochlainn in September 2013.

At the time I was working as a reporter with The Irish Post, and journalistically at least, what the Sinn Fein TD was talking about sounded implausible. Because if the practice was as widespread as he suggested during that phone call, then why was it not a big story in Ireland? 

To be fair, there were some excellent journalists reporting on the story — Katie Hannon and Mick Clifford of the Irish Examiner among them.

But a phone call to Clare Daly, Independent TD, from Newbridge, threw up the not at all implausible explanation — that too many others had bought into the reasoning that the two Garda whistleblowers, Maurice McCabe and John Wilson were “headbangers” and not to be taken seriously.

Daly had seen documents that suggested what these two whistleblowers were saying was not without foundation. I got John Wilson’s number and called him the same afternoon. Again, mindful of the fact that I’m living and working in London, I was astonished when he told me that he’d been sought out by the media in Ireland no more than a couple of times at this juncture.

Ronan Early, former editor of this newspaper, then sports editor of The Irish Post, along with the website editor, Steve Cummins, from Meath, were key to supporting this story as it developed. They recommended getting some concrete information from John Wilson. Something that would prove one way or the other whether there was any merit in what he was saying.

Within the hour, Wilson was back on with details of a car then registered to the address of the Irish Independent editor-in-chief, Stephen Rae, having had penalty points squashed.

After using additional means to prove that this was indeed true, and getting legal advice, we ran the story.

Over one weekend it became one of the most read of the year.

We’d gotten a significant bite out of an issue of national interest that the media in Ireland were failing to give due prominence to.

John Wilson then arranged for me to have a conversation with Maurice McCabe. We spoke in late 2013, but he was still a serving Garda and it was obvious from the phonecall that he was under significant pressure.

The days passed and we expected other media in Ireland to jump on the penalty points story, to give it the attention they have in more recent times. It didn’t happen then. Determined to find a bigger platform for the story, I started contacting the most respected current affairs programmes in the country: Prime Time, RTÉ Investigates, RTÉ News, This Week. There was a real sense at the time of them being extremely cautious about the story and reluctant to treat with any seriousness the claims of McCabe and Wilson.

Exasperated, I eventually pitched the story to RTÉ’s Radio’s The Documentary on One — one of the less likely platforms in the national broadcasting schedule to agree to run with this hard news, developing story. And in November 2013, I started travelling to Cavan to meet with John Wilson. Months had passed since we started covering the penalty points story in The Irish Post, and again I was taken aback when Wilson told me that only one other journalist had travelled to Cavan to meet him. Not long before the documentary went to air, the issue had started to get more traction, not with the wider media, but with the Public Accounts Committee. And my colleagues decided that the documentary should air on the Saturday in January days before then Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan appeared before that same committee. Afterwards, I remember getting a call from Ireland telling me that I could now expect a call from the Gardai in relation to their interest in the recorded tapes with John Wilson that were in my possession. But by then, some in the bigger news outlets decided that the story was now one that demanded prominent and comprehensive coverage. That it took so long I consider a massive failure of my profession at the most influential level — with, as I’ve said, a few notable exceptions. Five years ago, the evidence in relation to Maurice McCabe and John Wilson was compelling. And if a small Irish paper in London could get into the story, there is no excuse for the fuller resourced organisations on the ground in Ireland to haven taken as long as they did to thoroughly get across it.

Robert Mulhern is a London based journalist contracted to RTE's The Documentary on One