Garda Commissioner Noirín O’Sullivan has defended her decision to assign her superintendent husband to a criminal investigation into contacts between a senior Garda officer and journalists.
The investigation is regarded as contentious because the officer under investigation had official sanction to contact and speak to members of the media at the time.
The monitoring of journalists’ telephone calls has also always been politically sensitive. There has also been disquiet in policing and media circles that the officer has been subjected to a criminal investigation rather than an internal disciplinary inquiry.
The NUJ said the investigation had “unusual aspects”. It was concerned “that nothing would happen that would damage the release of information in the public interest”.
The officer has been arrested and his office searched by a team including Commissioner O’Sullivan’s husband Det Supt Jim McGowan. The officer is currently suspended from his job and faces being brought before the courts and charged with criminal offences.
At a Garda passing-out ceremony at the Garda College,Templemore, Co Tipperary, Commissioner O'Sullivan was asked by the media if there was a conflict of interest in her assigning her husband to the team carrying out the investigation.
"I think it's a matter of public record that my husband is a detective superintendent in An Garda Síochána and any role that he carries out is in that capacity," she said.
The Irish Times understands the officer's phone records, including texts to and from journalists, have been accessed and studied. However, Commissioner O'Sullivan insisted journalists' telephones were not being monitored or tapped.
“Absolutely not, absolutely not,” she said.
Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald declined to respond to questions the assigning of Det Supt McGowan to the inquiry.
“I certainly don’t have any information about the monitoring of any journalists in this country,” she added.
The investigation into the officer began last year and sought to establish how the media learned of two cases in which Roma children were taken from their families, only to be returned when DNA tests confirmed who their parents were.
It is now understood the inquiry into the officer has gone beyond the cases of the children being taken in October 2013. When he was arrested in May and detained overnight, the investigating team went to a number of locations to interview his colleagues about him and sought out a journalist to interview, though the reporter was not available.
