Listen and Learn : Irish phone tapping

In the midst of the talk of American bugging, Taoiseach Enda Kenny told reporters he operated on the basis that somebody was listening in on his telephone conversations. Of course, he has been in politics since the mid-1970s, when tapping was rife.

In the early 1980s, when I was researching a book on Charles Haughey, I found that there was almost paranoia about using the telephone among politicians. A security official discreetly warned me that phone-tapping was extensive. Shortly afterwards, I discussed some matter with Dick Spring, who told me not use his phone for sensitive matters because he had been warned it might be tapped.

Garret FitzGerald was so suspicious of his telephone that he would not even hold a sensitive conversation in his home with a telephone in the room. He would disconnect the phone and move it into another room before returning to hold a confidential conversation.