Workers Solidarity Movement

Tuesday night the government published the overdue Cooke Report into the GSOC bugging controversy. Retired High Court Judge John Cooke, no stranger to controversy himself (link: see comments) was appointed by Enda Kenny to establish whether the offices of GSOC were bugged.

Wednesday morning Frances Fitzgerald, Minister for Justice and Equality and replacement for Alan Shatter after he was forced to resign, is lauding the report as an exoneration of the Gardaí. The 64-page report claims that “evidence does not support the proposition that actual surveillance…took place and much less that it was carried out by members of the Garda Síochána.” Yet there are a number of revelations in the report that raise serious questions as to its ability to speak to the bugging issue in a definitive manner.

Upwards of 50 staff and students attended a protest at NUI Maynooth today in a show of solidarity for fellow student Jerrie Ann Sullivan in the wake of the report into the Rossport “rape tape” incident released this week by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission. The impromptu protest, organised by the NUIM Politics and Sociology Society, was called to register the “abhorrence” of the rape comments incident and its handling by GSOC and Irish media. Despite the wet and windy conditions, the crowd listened to a range of speakers each of whom condemned GSOC’s handling of this particular case and policing in Corrib more generally.