Retired garda sues Donegal councillor Frank McBrearty for defamation

A retired garda who helped expose police corruption in Co Donegal at the Morris tribunal has taken defamation proceedings against a man whom gardaí tried to frame for murder.

Tina Fowley, who retired as a garda this year, has issued legal proceedings against Frank McBrearty jnr over comments posted online in response to an article on the Donegal Daily website about her retirement.

Ms Fowley, who is originally from Sligo but now living in Letterkenny, is also suing Mr McBrearty’s daughter Chantelle and the Donegal Daily Ltd.

High Court records show that the two sets of legal proceedings were issued on December 13th.

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The retired garda took issue with online comments posted by Mr McBrearty and his daughter in response to an article published on the news website in October. The comments related to the treatment of the McBreartys by An Garda Síochána.

Donegal Daily has since limited the people who can comment on the Facebook post of the article. There are currently no comments on the article on the news website.

Mr McBrearty, an independent councillor in Donegal, told The Irish Times he will defend the case. “I certainly look forward to defending any case that she takes against me and my daughter,” he said.

He added that Ms Fowley’s solicitors sent the court summons to him and his daughter by registered post earlier this week in Christmas wrapping paper.

Gallagher & Brennan solicitors based in Letterkenny, Co Donegal came on record Mr McBrearty in the case for the county councillor on Thursday.

In Ms Fowley’s statement of claim, her solicitors said the allegedly defamatory comments about her were published on the Donegal Daily website and its Facebook page, which have “significant and large circulations in and around the northwest, nationally and and internationally and are available to the world at large.”

The legal claims states that the Facebook page has more than 108,000 followers.

The Donegal Daily reported in the October article that Ms Fowley was due to retire from the Garda after 32 years and described her as a “trusted public servant” who had “played an active role in representing the Donegal branch of An Garda Síochána locally and nationally”.

The article also made reference to Ms Fowley being honoured with an award from the Letterkenny Rotary Club “in recognition of her exceptional service to the community”.

Ms Fowley is represented by well-known Sligo solicitor Damien Tansey.

Mr McBrearty said Mr Tansey had written to him seeking an apology over his online comments about Ms Fowley and payment of €1,500 each from him and his daughter by way of damages.

Ms Fowley and Mr McBrearty were key figures at the Morris tribunal, a public injury that held hearings from 2002 to 2007 to investigate allegations of corruption against the Garda in Co Donegal during the 1990s and the early 2000s.

Richie Barron death

The tribunal found that gardaí had attempted to frame Mr McBrearty, a businessman from Raphoe, for the murder of Donegal cattle dealer Richie Barron, who died on a country road near Raphoe in 1996 in what was later found to be a hit-and-run.

Mr McBrearty was arrested along with his cousin Mark McConnell in connection with the death, which gardaí had been treating as murder. The tribunal found a statement from an informer implicating the pair was coerced.

Mr McBrearty settled his legal actions against the State for being wrongly accused of murder for €1.5 million in 2005.

Ms Fowley, who manned the incident room in Letterkenny Garda station during the Barron murder investigation, was commended by the tribunal for giving evidence of a “conspiracy” to alter interview notes during Mr McBrearty’s arrest.

She was suspended from the Garda for a period but took legal proceedings. She was reinstated in 2005, serving in the Garda until her retirement in October.

Ms Fowley gave evidence to the Morris tribunal about serious misconduct by senior Donegal gardaí. She alleged that she saw Insp John McGinley practising the signature of Mr McBrearty while he was being held in connection with Barron’s death. Insp McGinley denied the allegation.

Ms Fowley told the tribunal that some detectives in Donegal were focused purely on linking the McBrearty family to Barron’s death. She also alleged that gardaí bullied and harassed her, forcing her to take two years of sick leave in the late 1990s. In 2005, it was claimed that a number of tapes relating to her evidence at the tribunal were taken in a burglary at her home in Letterkenny.

Mr McBrearty was elected as a Labour councillor to Donegal County Council in 2009. He was later re-elected as an independent.