Moore to meet Ahern over his detention at port

FOLK legend Christy Moore will meet next week with Foreign Affairs minister Dermot Ahern to discuss the singer’s controversial two-hour detention in Holyhead, north Wales.

The department said yesterday it had been in direct contact with the songwriter. A spokesperson said the Irish Embassy in London had also raised his detention ordeal with the British authorities.

North Wales Police Force, in a brief statement yesterday, said it was not its policy to identify anyone questioned at Holyhead port.

Claire Jones, a spokesperson for the police force said: “Police officers comply with legislation which allows us to conduct stop checks on people travelling through the port under the Terrorism Act 2000.

“We try and reduce inconvenience, as much as we can, to people travelling through the port.”

Mr Moore however, due to arrive back in Ireland tomorrow, said he was “looking forward to getting home.” He wraps up a short British concert tour in Liverpool tonight.

The entertainer is annoyed police didn’t give a reason for separately interrogating him and the driver of his people carrier.

When Mr Moore asked them, he was told it was standard procedure. “I can’t really make much sense of it,” he said. “A couple of different possibilities have occurred to me. They knew I was Christy Moore, an Irish singer going to tour England and they were just harassing me - that’s one possibility. The other possibility was that it was a genuine security check but the fact that they didn’t open the instrument cases makes a lie of that.”

Mr Moore said as police informed him it was a regular occurrence, he felt it was appropriate to make a diplomatic complaint.

The singer said the nature of the interrogation was “strange.”

He added: “They wanted to know the names and ages of our children and what they were doing and what kind of money they were earning - what kind of houses we lived in, how many bathrooms did we have, what kind of cars did we drive?”

His driver colleague was asked the names and dates regarding his deceased parents, his brothers and sisters. “That upset him, and then they told him not to raise his voice. He said ‘I’m not going to talk to you about my mother and father. I’m even offended that you would ask me’.

Mr Moore said he did not have picture ID and his credit card was accepted.

He has made a full statement which was passed on to the Irish ambassador in London and to the Department of Foreign Affairs.