Scannal

Episode one of the new series of Scannal looks back at the two word phrase that brought about a constitutional crisis and led to the resignation of a President of Ireland, a phrase that would live in political infamy for decades. The 18th of October 1976 was like any other day in the Minister for Defence’s diary. He was due to perform a routine opening of an army facility, in this case a cookhouse in Columb Barracks, Mullingar. But when Minister Paddy Donegan stood up to address the varied ranks of army personnel, his speech kicked off a constitutional crisis. He declared, to the massed army ranks that their Supreme Commander and President of Ireland, Cearbhall Dálaigh, was a “Thundering disgrace!” This was in response to President Ó Dálaigh referring the Coalition Government’s Emergency Powers Bill to the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality. The bill proposed extending the period of time in which Gardaí could detain and interrogate certain suspects without charge from two days to seven days. Even in the context of the ongoing Troubles and the recent assassination of the British Ambassador to Ireland, Christopher Ewart-Biggs, this seemed heavy-handed. As it turned out, the Supreme Court found no constitutional objection to the bill and President Ó Dálaigh duly signed it into law. But Minister for Defence, Paddy Donegan, whose own pub had been bombed twice, insisted on having his say at the official opening of the army cookhouse in Mullingar. As the words “thundering disgrace” echoed through the media, all hell broke loose. The Minister offered to resign, but then Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave refused to accept his resignation. Four days later, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh became the first President of Ireland to resign from office. For President Ó Dálaigh, it was an inglorious end to a stellar career. From journalist to Ireland’s youngest Attorney General, and from Chief Justice in Ireland to the European Court of Justice in Luxembou

In recent years miscarriages of justice have captivated international fascination with the likes of podcast “The Serial”and the Netflix hit “Making a Murderer”. Here in Ireland we are no strangers to wrongful convictions. But the case that gave rise to the first ever posthumous Presidential pardon is extraordinarily shocking and horrific. SCANNAL recalls the 1940 murder of Moll McCarthy in Marlhill, New Inn, Co. Tipperary. The mother of six children was brutally killed with a shotgun blast to her neck. Forensic reports indicate her body was then dressed and moved to where she was found in a field, where a second shot blasted away her face almost entirely. Her neighbour Harry Gleeson was charged, tried, convicted, lost all his appeals, was refused any clemency and then hanged – all in the space of 5 months. In 2015 – 75 years later – The Irish State granted Harry Gleeson a posthumous pardon, finally admitting a terrible miscarriage of justice had taken place to an innocent man that our justice system had wrongly made into a murderer. The Presidential pardon leaves Harry Gleeson an innocent man – hanged in the wrong. But it also leaves so many questions unanswered. If Harry didn’t, then who did murder Moll McCarthy? If Harry Gleeson was innocent, how did this all happen? And why did it take so long to set to right? Some answers lie in the fact that the murder of Moll McCarthy is inextricably linked with powerful forces in our society – sex, religion, politics and how we deal with outsiders; qualities that make for tightly knit communities but also have a very dark side.

February 10th 1984 William Ryan executive chef at Shannon Airport and his wife celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary with a party at Bunratty Folk Park in Co Clare. The night ended in tragedy with a 23-year-old banqueting manager Patrick Nugent fatally injured. What happened in Bunratty that night became the focus of national debate and has still never been satisfactorily explained.