GSOC crisis: 'Security swoop fully justified'

An ex-garda ombudsman has said concern over garda knowledge of sensitive GSOC inquiries triggered the move to carry out a surveillance sweep at the commission’s headquarters in Dublin.

Conor Brady — who retired from GSOC at the end of 2011 — said he believed that after meeting the gardaí, members of the current Ombudsman Commission became “increasingly concerned” that gardaí sometimes appeared to know more “than GSOC thought the gardaí should have known”.

He said that GSOC members were trained to be suspicious and that the security sweep was fully justified.