The report of the Commission of Investigation into the Dean Lyons case fails to explain how the young drug addict could have provided a detailed confession to a murder he could not have committed, the Labour Party leader has said.
Pat Rabbitte
Speaking following the publication of the report today, Pat Rabbitte said he accepted that that the sole inquiry member, George Birmingham SC, conducted his investigations in diligent and thorough way, but that his central conclusion "beggars belief".
"However, I think the public will find it difficult to accept that a person who is described in the report as being a heroin addict and 'borderline mentally handicapped' who had attended a special school could have outwitted three teams of experienced Garda interrogators and was able to deduce details that could only have been known to the killer from questions put to him."
The report finds that Garda records with Mr Lyons, who was wrongly charged with the murders of two women in Dublin in 1997, were "incomplete, potentially misleading and could have led to a miscarriage of justice".
Senior gardaí investigating the murders also expressed their doubts about Lyons's 'confession', but these doubts were never conveyed to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Mr Rabbitte said it is quite clear from Mr. Birmingham's report that Dean Lyons was "a very unstable and disturbed young man who should never have been charged and that the DPP would not have agreed to charges being laid had the DPP's office been made aware of the reservations expressed by at least one of the interrogation team".
The Labour leader said this was "yet another report that has made serious criticisms of the manner in which the Gardai carried out their duties, including the failure to keep adequate notes and use of leading questions".
"It provides yet more evidence for the need for far more fundamental reform of the Gardaí than either the Minister or the Commissioner have shown any appetite for so far."