Dean Lyons Commission of Investigation

The role of the commission of investigation into the Dean Lyons case was to investigate the circumstances surrounding the making of a confession by Dean Lyons (deceased) about the deaths of Ms. Mary Callinan and Ms. Sylvia Sheils in March 1997 in Grangegorman, Dublin 7. The commission of investigation was established by government order on 7 February, 2006. Its sole member was Mr. George Birmingham, SC.

The Report of the Dean Lyons Commission of Investigation (PDF – 3.2MB) was published by the Tánaiste on 1 September, 2006.

The report offers a thorough, independent analysis of the facts surrounding the false confession made by Dean Lyons based on the evidence of all relevant witnesses. In summary, its conclusions were as follows:

• There was no deliberate attempt made to undermine the rights of Dean Lyons. Instead, inappropriate leading questions were inadvertently asked of him by interviewing Gardaí – a failure which equipped him with the information to maintain a credible (albeit false) confession.
• Dean Lyons’s confessions were attributable to prior existing vulnerabilities within his personality which were compounded by his heroin addiction.
• Some of the Gardaí who interviewed him openly expressed scepticism as to his credibility at case conferences, but these doubts were never conveyed to the DPP as they should have been prior to the latter’s initial decision to direct charges.
• The Garda written records of some of the interviews with Dean Lyons were incomplete, potentially misleading and could have led to a miscarriage of justice.
• The decision of the original investigation team, three months after their original recommendation, to recommend to the DPP that the existing charge of murder against Dean Lyons should proceed and that an additional charge should be laid in respect of the second fatality is described as 'difficult to understand and even harder to justify'.

A hard copy of the report can be purchased from the Government Publications Sales Office, which is located at Sun Alliance House, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2.