Leo Varadkar warns of "sinister" garda acts against private citizens' rights

Health Minister Leo Varadkar has warned that gardaí are taking part in “sinister” acts breaching private citizens’ rights after it emerged that the force has used covert surveillance and tapped journalists’ phones and computers.

The senior Fine Gael minister hit out at the situation and said he will be “speaking to the Minister for Justice”, Frances Fitzgerald, about the matter in the coming days after the situation was revealed yesterday.

Under previously hidden powers, the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission has confirmed it accessed the phone records of two crime reporters from the Herald and the Daily Mail after a complaint was made by a friend of the late model Katy French about alleged leaking of information by individual gardaí.