Garda unit all but disbanded after previous taping claims

The Garda anti-racketeering unit was all but disbanded in 1994 following revelations that conversations with a TD, a journalist, and two businessmen were taped and given to a third party.

Two investigations were carried out by the Garda commissioner of the time, Patrick Culligan, but failed to find who took the tapes and gave them to a third party.

All gardaí in the unit, from the rank of inspector down, were transferred elsewhere, according to the Dáil record on the issue.

The then justice minister, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, told the Dáil it was not illegal for gardaí to tape telephone conversations and that they did not need to tell the other party they were being recorded.

“There was no question of any telephone being tapped,” she said. “I am advised by the Garda commissioner that conversations made and received on a telephone in the Garda anti-racketeering unit were taped by an officer engaged in those conversations.

“There is nothing in law which prevents anybody from making a recording of his or her own telephone conversations and, therefore, no question of authorisation by me or any of my predecessors arose.

“I emphasise that I am talking only of taping conversations where there are valid operational reasons for doing so.

“The general public need assurance that their telephone conversations with the gardaí are not taped willy-nilly on the whim of individual gardaí. I assure the House that I would utterly reject and condemn any such practice if it were found to exist.

“The fact that the Garda treat it as something which may be permissible only where there is operational justification for it, is evidenced by the fact that a thorough investigation is now under way concerning the circumstances and the justification for the taping of certain conversations by the anti-racketeering unit.”

Ms Geoghegan-Quinn added that the most worrying aspect of the case was that taped conversations were wrongfully removed from the offices of the anti-racketeering unit and pasted onto a third party. This, too, was being investigated.

Ms Geoghegan-Quinn said she learned about it when a senior member of Fine Gael contacted the secretary of the Department of Justice with information about the existence of a tape containing a number of conversations, including that of a deputy who, at the time, was a member of Fine Gael.

The department informed the Garda commissioner who began an internal Garda inquiry.