A garda whistleblower has denied developing a "persecution complex" over his treatment by garda management after he complained about the handling of a murder case.
Retired Garda Sergeant William Hughes is being cross-examined at the Disclosures Tribunal in Dublin Castle about his allegations of systems failure before the 2006 murder of Baiba Saulite.
Ms Saulite, 28, was shot dead at the door of her home in Swords, Co Dublin, on 19 November 2006. She was originally from Latvia and was a mother of two young children.
The murder remains unsolved.
A week before she was shot dead, Ms Saulite gave Sgt Hughes a draft victim impact statement saying she feared for her life. Sgt Hughes had not read the statement in full before the murder.
Counsel for An Garda Síochána, Mícheál Ó Higgins SC, suggested that Mr Hughes' "original sense of guilt morphed into anger and then into vengefulness".
"You were developing something of a persecution complex…you believed that you had seriously messed up and felt if you had read the draft victim impact statement, somehow things would have been different and you were way too hard on yourself," suggested Mr Ó Higgins.
Mr Hughes said he was never vengeful towards garda authorities, but agreed he was angry and felt more could have been done to prevent Ms Saulite’s murder.
Mr Hughes said he was also "extremely unhappy" with the disciplinary process taken against him which made him feel "bullied, harassed and scapegoated" by management.
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