Witness 'never had affair' with garda

At the Morris tribunal yesterday, Ms Adrienne McGlinchey said she never had a sexual relationship with Det Garda Noel McMahon…

At the Morris tribunal yesterday, Ms Adrienne McGlinchey said she never had a sexual relationship with Det Garda Noel McMahon even though she spent a lot of time with him.

Mr Peter Charleton SC, for the tribunal, asked her if she had a deeper friendship or relationship with Garda McMahon.

Ms McGlinchey replied: "I've never had a sexual relationship with Noel McMahon and Noel McMahon has on many occasions, with drink, tried to be with me. I haven't had an affair with him. He on many occasions tried to go with me when he had drink on him. That's really all I can say. It actually is quite annoying to think that I had to say to the Carty team that I was going with him when I wasn't."

Mr Charleton said Ms Yvonne Devine, in her tribunal statement, made reference to a traffic accident at Malin Head when Garda McMahon went off the road. "She said that you said to her that you'd flashed your breast at Noel McMahon and in consequence of that, driving up around Malin Head, he'd got so startled that he drove into a ditch. That is the allegation," he said.

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Ms McGlinchey said: "Well, I can't answer that because Noel McMahon was plastered drunk and he was that drunk that night that I don't think anything or any part of my body he would've seen because he just went straight into the ditch when he took the corner," she said.

Ms McGlinchey said she was with him every night of the week but she was not having an affair with him.

"The moral of the story is I was not having an affair with him no matter what anybody wants to think," she said.

Mr Charleton referred to her statement to the internal Garda Carty inquiry. Ms McGlinchey agreed she had said she had been taken to the beach and threatened by a number of gardaí but later withdrew the statement.

She said she named a number of gardaí but had never seen them that night.

Asked what had really happened, Ms McGlinchey said Ms Devine's younger brother, Pearse, had handed her a note asking her to meet him at Rathmullen.

She went to the beach on July 21st, 1999, in the early hours. Garda McMahon arrived in a car with two men whom she had met at his home in Buncrana and who she believed were RUC men called Alistair and Cyril.

She said somebody said to her she should withdraw her statement or she would be thrown over the pier or be put through the windscreen of a car.