Probe into inmate’s ‘mobile’ in court

The Prison Service is to respond to the High Court shortly explaining how a high-profile gangland inmate was able to brandish an object he claimed was a mobile phone before judges at the high-security Special Criminal Court.

Anthony ‘Noddy’ McCarthy was giving evidence last month in the trial of Limerick crime boss Wayne Dundon and his associate, Nathan Killeen, who were both charged with the murder of businessman Roy Collins in April 2009.

McCarthy, 32, of Fairgreen, Garryowen, is serving a life sentence for the murder of a rival gang chief Kieran Keane in January 2003. He is serving his sentence in Limerick Prison.

As he told the court that he did not know of any prisoner around the time of Mr Collin’s murder who did not have a mobile phone, he said he had a mobile phone with him in court.

He stood up in the witness box and produced an item from his pocket, saying: “Here, look at this.”

He claimed: “I’ve my phone with me here in court, but I have it on silent so it doesn’t buzz.”

Prison officers in the court established that the item was a remote control, similar to the ones in prison, and agreed that it must have come from there.

Presiding judge Ms Justice Iseult O’Malley said it was “bewildering and unsatisfactory” that any item of that nature could have been produced in the Special Criminal Court, of all courts, by a person of McCarthy’s status.

She said the three judges were not happy with this “at all” and proposed to inform the president of the High Court of the incident.

A spokesman for the Courts Service yesterday said the registrar of the High Court had written to the Irish Prison Service about the matter.

An IPS spokesman said they had received a letter from the office of the president of the High Court and would be replying when an internal investigation had been completed.

The investigation is thought to be at its final stages and the report is expected soon. The IPS will then reply to the High Court with details of the report and explaining how the item was not detected in searches.

Prison sources told the Irish Examiner that there should have been at least three separate searches of McCarthy. One should have taken place when he was removed from his cell and placed in a Limerick Prison holding cell. It is thought this would have included a full “pat down”, a request to empty pockets and a requirement to sit on the BOSS chair, which scans for metal objects.

It is thought the Prison Service Escort Corps would then have searched him before taking him to the van and again exiting the van for the holding cell at the Criminal Courts complex in Dublin. Prison bosses are said to be “embarrassed and annoyed”, particularly given it involved the Special Criminal Court and a gangland trial.

“We won’t know where the security fell down,” said one prison source, “but it’s an obvious failure and shouldn’t have happened.”