Morris tribunal:Publican Frank McBrearty jnr was involved in heated exchanges at the Morris tribunal yesterday.
At one point a lawyer representing some gardaí suggested to Mr McBrearty that he had told lies about members of the force who had interviewed him because he was ashamed that he had made a statement confessing to a murder he did not commit.
Michael Cush is representing three of the four detectives from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation who questioned Mr McBrearty in Letterkenny Garda station on December 4th, 1996.
Mr McBrearty denies he signed a statement on that date confessing he had assaulted Richie Barron, now known to have been victim of a hit-and-run car crash.
"I suggest you did sign that statement knowingly and you are ashamed of it. You are outraged by your treatment by the gardaí, particularly the arrest in front of your children, and that shame and anger, I suggest to you, have motivated you to tell lies about the gardaí and you sought to damage my clients as much as you possibly can," Mr Cush said.
"What about the damage they have done to us?" Mr McBrearty responded.
"The only . . . people damaged here are my family. You can't get out of the fact the McBrearty family have finally exposed how corrupt a Garda force we have in Ireland.
"The fact is it will probably happen again because the Garda force won't change."
The publican said he was willing to undergo a lie detector test or be hypnotised in order to discover what happened during his arrest a decade ago.
Mr McBrearty told the barrister he could not remember what he signed while under arrest. "I have wrecked my brain, back and forwards for 10 years, trying to analyse what I signed in that station," he said. "I don't know what I signed in that station, but I know I didn't sign the confession."
In evidence yesterday, Mr McBrearty repeated an allegation that a former garda had killed Mr Barron, and "paid £10,000 to a member of the Provisional IRA to have me shot dead in order to hide his [ the garda's] being involved in the death of Richie Barron".
"I had a right to be frightened, because of the documents that I had seen at this tribunal," he said.
Mr McBrearty clashed several times with Mr Cush and tribunal chairman Mr Justice Frederick Morris during the day and initially refused to give evidence while detectives who had questioned him in custody were in the room.
He said he would "not be responsible" for what might happen if the gardaí did not leave the room.
After a brief consultation with his clients, Mr Cush told the tribunal they would watch proceedings on closed-circuit television, and a solicitor would bring any instructions they wished to convey.
Mr McBrearty will face further questions today.