Government admits role in journalist's arrest

The Government today admitted that the Department of Justice was behind the arrest of a journalist for exposing a leaked report critical of the Gardaí.

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell insisted he had "no hand, act or part" in the controversy which has sparked a national debate about press freedom.

The reporter at the centre of the investigation, Mick McCaffrey, was released without charge last night along with a detective sergeant, believed to be the source of the leak, also arrested as part of the probe.

Investigating gardaí have sent a file to the Director of Public Prosecutions and are awaiting advice on whether to proceed with the case against the pair.

Mr McDowell told the Dáil that his secretary general sparked the garda inquiry that led to the arrests.

"I'm saying to this house again that the secretary general of my department became aware that it was proposed to publish an article in a newspaper based on a leaked report," he said.

"The newspaper itself was warned that it was a criminal offence to publish the material before it (the department) published the material and the secretary general in those circumstances decided himself when the publication took place that he would make a complaint to members of an Garda Síochána."

The row erupted after the Dublin-based Evening Herald newspaper last published excerpts of a Commission of Investigation report into a homeless drug addict's false confessions to a double murder last august.

Laws regulating such inquiries allow for an individual to be jailed for up to five years or fined up to €300,000 for disclosing the contents of the investigation before official publication of its final report.

The report found that detectives in the case had inappropriately questioned Dean Lyons, and that records of the interviews were potentially misleading and may have led to a miscarriage of justice.

Mr Lyons was charged with the murder of Sylvia Sheils (aged 59) and Mary Callinan (aged 61) who were stabbed to death in their beds in March 1997 in sheltered accommodation run by St Brendan's psychiatric hospital in Grangegorman, Dublin.

The charges were dropped seven months later and Mr Lyons died seven months afterwards in England. Gardaí issued an unprecedented apology to his family for charging an innocent man.

The Tánaiste insisted he was totally unaware of the Garda investigation into the leaking of the report.

In a further twist to the events, Mr McDowell heaped praise on the reporter at the centre of the garda investigation sparked by the minister's own Department of Justice.

"I've met Mick McCaffrey - who I like a lot, I think he's a very decent fellow and is a relative of an officer in my department - on a number of occasions," he said.

"I had no idea on that occasion that this was going to happen to him and I like him very, very much as an individual. He's a decent hard-working journalist.

"I have no malice whosoever against him and I can assure this house that what I said here yesterday and what I've repeated here today is the total unvarnished truth."