A former Garda superintendent has told the Morris tribunal he joked during the arrest of eight people for the murder of a Donegal cattle dealer that he had obtained a confession from the key suspect in the case.
"I know at one stage I came into the room and I said that I had interviewed Frank McBrearty for the last three hours, and he had admitted the whole thing to me. I said it as a ruse and that was the last I heard about it," retired Det Supt John McGinley said.
The tribunal has found that Mr McBrearty jnr and others arrested were completely innocent of any involvement in the death of cattle dealer Richie Barron, a hit-and-run victim.
The superintendent said that he had not practised Mr McBrearty's signature, as was alleged by Garda Tina Fowley to the Carty team in 1999.
He said that the allegation had been "a cause of enormous stress".
"Nothing happened along the lines of what Garda Fowley is suggesting happened," he said. "There was no practising of his signature, no writing of his signature either."
Mr McGinley said it was difficult to say he had made the joke, because of the allegation in the media that he had forged a signature.