Tracking down the evil eye

IN Garda headquarters they can’t recall who suggested the codename Amethyst and the detective chief superintendent in charge insists it holds no significance.

The men Operation Amethyst turfed out of bed in a hundred homes early one May morning last year in the biggest crackdown on child pornography in the history of the State were not the usual down-at- heel, streetwise targets of dawn raids.

These were a sophisticated set with neat lawns, good jobs, letters after their names the cheese and wine types who hardly have a parking ticket to tarnish their reputations.