Social worker not contacted about "enormous error" in McCabe records, tribunal hears

A social worker told the Charleton tribunal she received no contact after an error in child protection records relating to Garda whistleblower Sergeant Maurice McCabe came to light. Laura Connolly, a duty social worker in Cavan, reviewed a file in April 2014 on a woman who had made allegations against Sgt McCabe. Records she subsequently created for his children erroneously contained allegations from an unrelated case, added to the original file by mistake in 2013. When the child protection service identified the error in May 2014, Ms Connolly was not contacted about it. Cross-examined by counsel for Sgt McCabe, she acknowledged the "total silence" surrounding the mistake and said she had no explanation for why nobody raised the matter with her. She told the tribunal she did not realise the significance of her involvement until reviewing the complete files in June 2017.