John Carthy - The Barr Tribunal

The Barr Tribunal

On 20 July 2006 the report of Mr. Justice Robert Barr was released. The Barr Tribunal had its first public sitting on 7 January 2003 and its last on 7 December 2004. In this 519 day period it sat in public for 208 days. It cost almost €18 million, and extended to a substantial 744 pages. The report was comprehensive and did not limit its focus to the Abbeylara siege alone but investigated the reasons why John Carthy had so much distrust for An Garda Síochána. In this latter category, Mr. Justice Barr focused on two particular incidents where, he found, John had good cause to distrust the force. The first revolved around the Garda withdrawal of John's gun in 1998 following rumours that John Carthy had threatened the lives of children in the Handball Alley, which he had used, and which he had been central to restoring, on a quotidian basis. On the basis of these rumours his gun was taken from him. The Tribunal found no basis for these threats and found the behaviour of the Garda to amounted to "deception" and "subterfuge". On the second background issue, the allegation that John's "deep animosity" to the Garda was as the result of being beaten in Garda custody, Justice Barr found against the force. Basing his view on evidence from his GP and neighbour Justice Barr concluded that John Carthy was "probably subjected to physical abuse while under interrogation" by two Gardaí. Barr stated that he believed Carthy was assaulted and did not believe the two Gardaí who denied this. John Carthy's previous treatment in Garda custody is the central theme behind his distrust of the force throughout the siege.

On the actual siege itself the report was damning of An Garda Síochána. The above mentioned FBI inquiry into the force's actions on that day found that the Garda made one principal fault on the day, namely by not shooting John Carthy soon enough. In contrast, Justice Barr identified twenty-three ‘fundamental’ and four ‘crucial’ mistakes by the Garda command during the siege in Abbeylara. Justice Barr was unequivocal in his condemnation of the management of An Garda Síochána. He described John Carthy’s death as ‘avoidable’ and his death as ‘unique’ because, although An Garda deal with armed individuals regularly, they were proven to be incompetent when dealing with a young man with a history of mental illness who, crucially, was of no threat to any other member of society other than himself. Justice Barr elucidated fourteen mistakes which were made by Sgt Michael Jackson of the ERU in his role as the negotiator at Abbeylara.