Former TD will go to court over phone records

FORMER Fine Gael TD Jim Higgins, revealed yesterday he is prepared to take legal action to block a tribunal into garda corruption from accessing his phone records.

Mr Higgins, now a senator, cited a 10-year-old Supreme Court ruling that stated it was not just a politician’s right but his duty to protect a source. The judgement came out of the Beef Tribunal, Mr Higgins said.

He and Labour deputy Brendan Howlin are challenging moves by the Morris Tribunal into garda activities in Donegal to obtain phone records in order to establish the source of various allegations.

But the Supreme Court ruling only applied to statements made within the Dáil and was later qualified by the High Court, which stated TDs did not have absolute privilege over statements made outside the chamber.

The pair first raised the allegations with the then Justice Minister John O’Donoghue in his office.

Mr Higgins said: “Supposing the tribunal issues an instruction. What’s our position then. My position then would be pointing to the Supreme Court judgement.

“If there is an insistence that we hand over our records then the matter may have to be tested in the courts.”

The serious claims made to the two politicians, dismissed as untrue and malicious, centre on two senior gardaí and their alleged relationship with a detective sergeant at the heart of much of what the Morris Tribunal plans to investigate.

Mr Higgins said yesterday he found it surprising the huge amount of emphasis that the tribunal appears to be showing in his and Mr Howlin’s phone records, given the mass of other allegations to be investigated by the tribunal.

He is due to meet with a tribunal investigator, Superintendent Brian Garvey, of the Canadian Royal Mounted Police, on January 9.

“I would be very anxious to co-operate in every way, but there’s a definite line in the sand in relation to providing those telephone records,” said Mr Higgins, whose solicitor received a huge amount of correspondence from the tribunal just before the Christmas break.

Mr Howlin also received legal documents from the tribunal indicating their intention to obtain the phone records. The Labour TD has been given until January 2 to issue a response. Mr Higgins said his solicitor had been given so many documents it would take days to go through it but added that it could include similar material as that received by Mr Howlin.

It emerged last week that a garda team, under Assistant Commissioner Kevin Carty, tasked with probing allegations of corruption in Donegal, had earlier attempted to access the phone records but had been warned off by the office of Director of Public Prosecutions.