Terms of taping probe to be set next week
Terms for the Commission of Investigation into the secret recordings will be finalised by next week, Taoiseach Enda Kenny confirmed yesterday.
The Cabinet yesterday discussed draft terms for the inquiry, which will be headed up by Supreme Court judge Nial Fennelly.
It was agreed a full inventory of the 2,485 tapes of calls from Garda stations will be made and access to them will be restricted.
It emerged yesterday that the Commission may look at the circumstances around the recording of phone calls in jails between prisoners and their solicitors. Mr Kenny confirmed yesterday conversations of 84 prisoners with their lawyers had been secretly recorded in jails.
Mr Kenny said terms for the inquiry into years of secret taping of phone conversations would be finalised in the next seven to 10 days.
Judge Fennelly is expected to review the draft terms. He has been a member of the Supreme Court since 2000. A former chairman of the Bar Council of Ireland, he chairs the Irish Centre for European Law and is president of the Irish Society for European Law.
The judge also previously chaired a working group which reported on the future of criminal jurisdiction in the courts in May 2003.
Legals sources said Judge Fennelly had an “incisive mind”, was “extraordinarily fair”, and had an attention to detail. He is due to retire from the Supreme Court on May 2, by which time the inquiry may be ready to be set up.
Two provisional reports from the Garda and the Department of Justice on the tapes will also help inform the terms.
Meanwhile, the Government have agreed that a Cabinet sub-committee will oversee long-term over-arching reforms of the gardaí. Mr Kenny, Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore, Justice Minister Alan Shatter and a fourth minister will sit on it.
