Case of reprimanded garda to be pursued in Dáil

A GARDA who was wrongly disciplined for sending a letter to politicians without the permission of his superiors has been reprimanded for sending the same letter to an internal garda journal.

The case has thrown up fundamental questions about the rights of individual gardaí and the power of garda management to read and hold on to correspondence sent by gardaí to elected political representatives.

The matter is to be pursued in the Dáil next week and internally in An Garda Síochána by representatives of the officer in question, Garda Harry O'Mahony. Labour Party justice spokesman Joe Costello, one of the intended recipients of the letter, is concerned at how garda management was able to read the letter and retain it for 18 months without his knowledge. In the letter, Garda O'Mahony highlighted the case of a Falun Gong practitioner Zhao Ming, a student at Trinity College Dublin, who had been apprehended by Chinese authorities on his return for a holiday in 1999.