A senior Garda whistleblower has disputed a version of events given to the Dáil over whether his anonymity was compromised when Helen McEntee was the justice minister.
There have been persistent questions raised about why Ms McEntee sent a protected disclosure her office had received in 2023 back to An Garda Síochána and whether that compromised the whistleblower in any way.
The disclosure alleging widespread malpractice in the force featured on a recent Prime Time Investigates programme on RTÉ and had been extensively covered in the Irish Examiner.
Taking leaders’ questions on Thursday, Ms McEntee, for the first time, provided detail on how and why she had acted on the matter.
She said that on the same day she received the protected disclosure from Detective Superintendent Brian O’Reilly, the Garda commissioner, Drew Harris, received an even more detailed version of the same disclosure.
Ms McEntee said this showed that any suggestion she had “exposed (the whistleblower) or that my actions have prejudiced the person in question is simply not correct”.
Det. Supt O’Reilly has told the Irish Examiner that this version of what transpired is entirely flawed.
He pointed out that he had communicated with Mr Harris in the months and years previous to presenting his protected disclosure to the minister and therefore his identity would have been known to the commissioner.
“However, what the minister failed to acknowledge to the Dáil was that the confidential correspondence she...
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