Gardaí involved in fatal shooting of robber to give evidence anonymously at inquest

Gardaí involved in the fatal shooting of an armed robber in west Dublin 14 years ago are to be allowed to give evidence at an inquest anonymously.

Senior coroner for Dublin, Myra Cullinane, has ruled that members of the Garda National Surveillance Unit will be allowed to give their testimony at an upcoming inquest into the death of Garett Molloy from behind a screen.

Only the coroner, legal representatives and members of the jury will be allowed to see the witnesses.

Molloy (28) from Lower Sheriff Street in Dublin, was fatally wounded when he was shot by undercover gardaí during an attempted armed robbery of a cash-in-transit vehicle outside a Centra store on Foxborough Road, Lucan on May 15th, 2009. The incident occurred as a Group 4 Securicor van pulled up outside the premises.

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Despite warnings by gardaí to drop the sawn-off shotgun he was carrying, Molloy was struck by a bullet fired by a plain-clothed garda after he had fired a shot in the air and was threatening to kill a security man.

An accomplice of Molloy, Keith Murtagh, was also wounded in the encounter with members of the Garda National Surveillance Unit while four other males were arrested at the scene, including Derek “Del Boy” Hutch, who received a 16-year prison sentence for his role in the crime. His brother, Gareth Hutch, who was later murdered as part of the Kinahan-Hutch gangland feud in May 2014, was cleared of charges relating to his role in the attempted robbery.

The gang had been under surveillance for several months by detectives investigating a series of armed cash-in-transit thefts and tiger kidnappings, including a €7.6 million raid on the Bank of Ireland branch at College Green in February 2009.

At a brief sitting of Dublin District Coroner’s Court on Thursday, Dr Cullinane expressed concern that there was still a problem about the “very protracted” process of disclosing documents which had been “an ongoing issue for a number of years”.

Dr Cullinane reminded the legal representatives for the various parties that she was the third coroner involved in overseeing the inquest into Molloy’s death.

The coroner said she had ruled that she would disclose any document considered relevant by any party to all others involved in the case as she wanted “as much disclosure as possible”.

She noted there had also been an issue about documents that had been “unlocatable” but said most of them had now been found.

However, Dr Cullinane said there still needed to be decisions over documents that parties were claiming were privileged.

Counsel for the Molloy family, Diana Stuart, said the inquest would need to understand the circumstances as to how “a lone officer was put in that position” given the resources of the Garda operation on the day of the shooting. Ms Stuart said it appeared that the coroner may not have the material to answer that because of the issue over the disclosure of documents.

Counsel for An Garda Síochána, Ronan Kennedy SC, said gardaí were maintaining a claim of privilege over documents where they regarded it as “appropriate”.

The coroner was told by counsel for the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (Gsoc), Charles Murray, that the commission wanted to review its claim of privilege over certain documents as a recent schedule of privileged documents shared between the parties “did not mirror” their files.

Dr Cullinane acknowledged that she has no right to determine any dispute over whether a document should be considered privileged and was an issue that, if it arose, would have to be addressed “in another forum”.

The inquest heard that a claim of privilege is being made over a total of 94 documents by the various parties.

Dr Cullinane adjourned the hearing to fix a date in about two months when the inquest would be updated on efforts to agree how various documents would be classified.

At an earlier hearing of the inquest in May 2013, the coroner heard that the Director of Public Prosecutions had directed that no prosecutions would arise out of a report by Gsoc into the fatal shooting.

At another sitting in the case in September 2013, calls were made by the legal representative of the garda commissioner for gardaí involved in the shooting to be allowed to give evidence anonymously over concerns for their safety if they were named.

At a subsequent hearing in January 2015, counsel for the Molloy family claimed the garda commissioner was withholding documents from the inquest.

It was pointed out to the coroner that Gsoc investigators had also complained that they were repeatedly refused access to files on the background to the shooting.