Probe fails to uncover GSOC bugging mole

A Garda Ombudsman "fact-finding investigation" has failed to uncover the mole who leaked details from a top-secret report to The Sunday Times

Watchdog chiefs said GSOC had undertaken “appropriate measures” to try and ascertain the facts and intended to take “no further action”.

The Garda Representative Association said it was “unclear” who GSOC was accountable to and said gardaí could not have confidence in a body unless there was accountability.

GRA president Dermot O’Brien said: “GSOC hasn’t identified who leaked the information, so we remain concerned about the security of data held by GSOC on our members.”

The chairman of the Oireachtas Public Services Oversight Committee, Padraig Mac Lochlainn, said his impression was that the three GSOC commissioners were “highly motivated” to find the source of the leak and “accepted” their statement that they couldn’t do so.

Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald did not comment last night.

The ombudsman launched the internal inquiry last February after the Sunday Times reported that GSOC offices had been subjected to a sophisticated surveillance operation using “government-level technology”.

The report sparked a crisis involving GSOC, the Garda Síochána, the then justice minister Alan Shatter, and the Government.

GSOC yesterday issued a one-page statement on the findings of its internal investigation, but did not publish the report. It said this was because it contained “personal data which is impossible to redact effectively”.

The statement said the investigation, conducted by Mark Connaughton SC, involved comparing information in the public domain to all GSOC documents; establishing who had access to those documents; interviews of “current and previous” GSOC staff the senior counsel saw fit, who “received co-operation from all”; access to emails, photocopier logs, and CCTV recordings; and technical analysis of “any mobile phone requested” — carried out by a specialist firm.

“The report was unable to establish individual responsibility for any disclosure, either on the part of an employee of GSOC or any other party,” said the statement. “It concludes that it is difficult to identify what additional information could usefully advance matters, short of obtaining the co-operation of the journalist in question, who declined the invitation.

“It is the ombudsman commission’s view that proportionate measures to try to ascertain the facts have been taken. The commission agrees with the conclusion that it is difficult to identify any further useful measures. No further action is intended.”