WITHIN 24 hours of the collapse of the Anthony Duncan extradition case on April 13th, a replica of the original British warrant had been sworn, delivered and then endorsed by the Irish authorities. The man behind the damage limitation exercise was Dermot Gleeson.
The fact that the mistake was rectified within 24 hours - without blame being officially apportioned - goes some way towards explaining the lack of urgency in investigating the case by the Minister for Justice, Mrs Owen, and her Department. It also prevented an outbreak of "megaphone diplomacy".
Mrs Owen had much to lose. In the political and administrative climate that existed, she was shaping up as the fall guy. And there was nothing she could do about it, other than to order an immediate inquiry.
The bottom line in Irish politics is that you rarely, if ever, criticise the Garda. You do it at your peril. Even when discipline within the ranks is breaking down, when the force is riven by dissension and when public unease is growing, it is safer to look the other way.
Just a week before the extradition case, Sean Barrett was embroiled in a High Court action by a garda who was resisting a disciplinary transfer from Cyprus. It was the most prominent anti disciplinary court action by a member of the force in recent years.
It reflected increasing tension between Government and Garda representatives. And it fitted a pattern of increasing litigiousness by ordinary members over disciplinary matters.
It also manifested competition for the hearts and minds of gardai between two representative bodies, as they clashed with senior management and resisted efforts by the Minister for Justice and wholly defamatory of Garda management.
IN the past year, the Commissioner said, members of the force had been charged with sex related offences, larceny, drunken driving, hit and run, theft, assaults and so on. These were matters which management could not ignore or fail to confront, Mr Culligan said, no matter what Mr Healy might like to think.
In was the same Commissioner, in the same poisonous industrial relations climate, who advised Mrs Owen - four weeks into an internal Garda investigation - that she would be unwise to draw conclusions about who was at fault concerning the British warrant until the inquiry was completed.
That is part of the background - the element which offers some political comfort to Mrs Owen. Another aspect is quite damning. For the Department of Justice received not just one copy of the extradition warrant on the night of April 12th, but two. One came from Britain and was complete. The other came from Garda Headquarters and was a fatally flawed, partial copy.
The Minister told the Dail the document she signed on the morning of April 13th was complete. If that was 50, it could only have been the British copy. She doesn't say what happened to the flawed, Irish version. Or why that Irish copy had not been presented to her for endorsement. But both copies were within her Department and officials were able to compare them when the court case collapsed.
It may have been one of the reasons why there was no great rush to judgment. Why had officials at the Department, or the Minister herself, not noticed a discrepancy between the two documents?
There now was the situation where the Minister and the Attorney General had been taxed full copies of the warrant from Britain but only partial copies existed within Garda Headquarters and the Department of Justice.
A dim possibility existed that the original warrant had never been transmitted by the British authorities, or had not been received. After all, only a partial copy existed at Garda Headquarters and a similar document had been transmitted to Justice. Into this cul de sac trundled the State inquiry.
There was another complicating and embarrassing factor. An Assistant Garda Commissioner had stamped and endorsed the flawed photocopy of the warrant. It had been produced, and sworn to in court, as an original.
After an initial Garda inquiry which lasted five days, the sergeant in charge of the extradition section was transferred "until the case was cleared up". A week later, Mr Bruton told the Dail he had no reason to believe there was "an omission" on the Irish side. He carefully avoided using the word "fault".
ON May 9th, nearly four weeks after the debacle, a preliminary report was sent to the Department of Justice by the Garda. Officials there raised further questions. But there was no sense of urgency about the matter. In fact, the Minister did not even read the report until six days later, when she was due to answer questions in the Dail. There, she expressed dissatisfaction over the delay and promised full disclosure as soon as the inquiry was completed. It took a further week for the Garda to formally acknowledge responsibility for losing or shredding the original document.
Next week, Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats will return to the charge. But, at this stage, the Attorney General and the Taoiseach appear to be in the clear. And there is no expectation of a re run of the events of 1994, when the Fianna Fail/Labour Party government collapsed on an extradition related issue.
The Minister is politically responsible for the actions of the Garda - they screw up; she carries the can. In this case, she is in trouble. And there are also questions to be answered within her own Department.
Michael McDowell sniffed his most incredulous sniff when the Minister pleaded ignorance of what was really going on for six long weeks. Mrs Owen explained that, as Minister, she could not engage in speculation. Due investigative process was vital. She could not rush to judgment.
In the light of ongoing tensions within the Garda, her protestations covered a multitude. But, as Mary Harney made clear, the two day Dail knees up was "not about human error" but about "Government accountability, openness and transparency". The Progressive Democrats leader went on to express sympathy and understanding for the "unfortunate garda" who caused the whole mess.
She was joined by Michael Woods and Dermot Ahern, who accused the Minister of "hanging out the Garda to dry" and of dumping on "the poor unfortunate garda, the paper shoveller in all of this". It was a neat political reverse. And it showed how easily mistake makers can become victims.
But that's politics for ya.