A garda, who entered a low-rise block of flats after seeing a partly-open window, had committed “a significant trespass” into a one-room studio where a man and his partner were asleep in bed, a judge ruled yesterday.

A civil servant in the Department of Justice has told a judge that gardaí who broke into his Dublin flat five years ago searched his belongings and said to him: “We are searching for bombs, bullets, and guns.”