Was 7:30am, Sunday appointment a clerical error or the beginning of the end for former garda commissioner Martin Callinan, who exited within 48 hours? The Taoiseach must explain the anomaly

WELCOME to the not-so-secret diary of Enda Kenny, aged 63 and 1/4. It is a stranger-than-fiction tome in which little appears to make sense.

Take, for example, the entry for Sunday, March 23: “07.30AM — Meeting with Justice Minister and officials.”

Getting together so early on a Sunday morning? That’s dedication to duty, for you, or, more likely, a sign that a crisis-management operation was swinging into action — except it never happened, apparently.

The curious entry matters, because that is the day before Mr Kenny dispatched the secretary general of the Justice Department, Brian Purcell, to the home of then garda commissioner, Martin Callinan, to convey the Taoiseach’s displeasure at the unfolding police-telephone taping scandal.

Within hours, Mr Callinan had exited his post as he resigned/was effectively sacked (delete according to gullibility).

The Taoiseach’s people insist the 7.30am entry was a clerical error. So, either they are not telling the truth (unlikely, as that would be too dangerous), or the Taoiseach’s office is so dysfunctional they cannot even keep an office diary properly (very likely, indeed, as that would be true to form for this Government).

Either way, the curious incident has thrown the spotlight back on Mr Kenny’s role in the ousting of Mr Callinan.

Ironically, the Taoiseach’s diary for the morning after Callinan’s exit reads: “09.30AM — Meet with Disney group, Dining Room.”

Now, we are sure this was probably a very worthy drive to encourage American corporate investment in Ireland, but it also conjures up the unfortunate image of Mr Kenny skipping off to have breakfast with the Seven Dwarfs and Goofy.

Or, perhaps a more fitting Disney character for Mr Kenny to hang out with — according, publicly, to opposition leaders, and, privately, a number of Government TDs — would be Pinocchio.

As we all know, that little wooden boy’s nose grew and grew with every fib he told.

While Mr Kenny is often accused of being wooden, that is where he would insist any comparison with Geppetto’s puppet should end.

But, sadly for him, even Fine Gael and Labour deputies admit, albeit off the record, that Mr Kenny’s version of events leading up to Mr Callinan’s abrupt exit is just not credible.

This is a very serious situation, as, if it were found that the Taoiseach had effectively sacked Mr Callinan, it would have circumvented the procedure for removing a commissioner, which needs full Cabinet approval, as set out in the 2005 An Garda Siochána Act.

Mr Kenny has also repeatedly assured parliament that he did not effectively sack Mr Callinan — despite opposition assertions that he is not telling the truth.

But anyone hoping for a short, sharp, and shocking display of quick-fire justice, as meted out by the Guerin probe into Alan Shatter’s failure to take whistleblower allegations seriously, will be disappointed.

The Fennelly inquiry has been tasked with looking into Callinan’s departure and is set to report in the new year.

But, as it is also investigating three decades of garda bugging and the entire, deeply suspicious handling by the gardaí of the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder case, we will be lucky to see it before the slated 2016 general election.

Which is why Mr Kenny is facing growing calls for him to go before the Oireachtas Justice Committee to explain himself.

Even the normally timid Tánaiste appears to be nudging him in this direction, but Fine Gael top brass have gone on the defensive — insisting it would be an unprecedented affront to a Taoiseach.

Whatever can they be afraid of by such an appearance?

The British prime minister is regularly subjected to robust questioning by a House of Commons committee, so why should not the Taoiseach be?

Mr Purcell is due to appear at the committee the week after the Euro and local elections (it would have been this week coming, but the Oireachtas decided to take that off to go canvassing, but, as the party leaders tell us, they are all about putting the country first, not their own careers).

However, the secretary general has seen fit to arrogantly tell our elected representatives that he does not want to be questioned on Mr Callinan’s exit.

This is most odd, as Mr Purcell — the secretary general in whom the new Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald refuses to express confidence — holds the key to the entire, mysterious affair.

According to the Taoiseach’s version of events, a random call to the Attorney General, on the evening of March 23, led to her telling him there was a serious matter she could not discuss with him on the telephone.

They then met in person, and she informed him of the widespread, and longstanding, practice of phone taping in garda stations.

Mr Kenny then kept the Justice Minister out of the loop for 24 hours, only telling Mr Shatter at a meeting with him and Mr Purcell on Monday evening.

It was then decided to send Mr Purcell to the commissioner’s home, that night, to convey the Taoiseach’s unease at the phone-taping affair. The commissioner “resigned” early the next morning.

According to Mr Kenny, at no point at the Monday night meeting did Mr Purcell reveal that the commissioner had written to the Department two weeks previously, insisting the Minister be made aware of his concern at the phone-taping scandal.

Instead, Mr Purcell rocked up at the commissioner’s home in darkness to deliver the Taoiseach’s displeasure, without ever mentioning the letter to Mr Kenny.

That is incredible — as in, it defies credibility.

At an election stunt this week, the Taoiseach climbed atop a muddy bank and then nearly tripped over on the way down.

It should have been a timely reminder that mud sticks when you play on slippery slopes.

The Taoiseach’s diary entry has turned out not be a smoking gun.

However, it did bring to mind Oscar Wilde’s line from The Importance Of Being Earnest: “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”

Mr Kenny must now go before the Justice Committee, tell the truth over the Callinan sacking, and so prove he knows the importance of being honest.