'What was lost, now found' — Gardaí find 'destroyed' records of Dowdall/Hutch tracking device

Gerard Hutch’s defence counsel said he 'will need just a little bit of time to consider matters'

A member of the Garda Armed Support Unit on duty at the Special Criminal Court during the trial of Gerry Hutch. File picture: Collins Courts

Records of a tracking device placed on the vehicle of former Sinn Féin councillor Jonathan Dowdall that the Special Criminal Court heard last week had been destroyed have now been located, the court heard this morning.

In the trial of Gerard ‘the Monk’ Hutch, accused of the murder of David Byrne in the Regency Hotel on February 5, 2016, prosecuting counsel Sean Gillane told the non-jury court on Monday morning that a “considerable amount of work” had been undertaken to try to locate this data which had yielded success this weekend.

The data relates to a tracker placed on Mr Dowdall’s car in the weeks after the Regency shooting. On dates following the shooting, Mr Dowdall drove Mr Hutch to locations in Northern Ireland and in Donegal.

The prosecution alleges that Mr Hutch had asked Mr Dowdall to arrange a meeting with provisional republicans to mediate or resolve the Hutch-Kinahan feud, due to threats being made against Mr Hutch’s family and friends. Last week, the court heard that records related to this tracker had been destroyed by a senior garda just a few months ago.

On Wednesday, the court heard that the former head of the covert garda National Surveillance Unit did not consult the senior investigating officer on the Regency Hotel murder investigation or the DPP when he destroyed records from a tracker device deployed on Mr Dowdall’s vehicle.

Hutch’s defence lawyer Brendan Grehan SC said he could not understand how former Detective Inspector Ciaran Hoey could have, “in good faith”, made the decision to have potentially relevant evidence to a criminal trial destroyed. Mr Grehan said it was a “real problem” and that he didn’t accept the State’s assertion it was done in accordance with legislation.

However, this morning, Mr Gillane said that a “large amount of technical work” was conducted in the days since the court last sat arising out of the records being destroyed and the position taken by Mr Grehan on the significance of it in this case.

“An extensive operation was conducted to see whether something could be done with what had arisen,” Mr Gillane said.

He said that the garda cybercrime division had scoped out whether a particular server could be examined “which looked like something that could take considerable time without guarantee of success”. Mr Gillane said that a securely stored desktop computer which had been listed for destruction was examined.

He said: “In the course of examination of that, a working copy of the material in question was located. This was confirmed to me yesterday evening.” He said that a working copy of the material has been made available for examination.

Mr Gillane said he had informed his colleague Mr Grehan of this matter, and Hutch’s defence counsel said this was all news to Mr Gillane and very recently to himself.

“If it appears what was lost was now found, I will need just a little bit of time to consider matters,” he said.

Mr Hutch, last of The Paddocks, Clontarf, Dublin 3, denies the murder of David Byrne.

His co-accused – Paul Murphy (59), of Cherry Avenue, Swords, Co. Dublin, and Jason Bonney (50), of Drumnigh Wood, Portmarnock, Dublin 13, have pleaded not guilty to participating in or contributing to the murder of David Byrne by providing access to motor vehicles on February 5, 2016.

The trial continues before Ms Justice Tara Burns, Ms Justice Sarah Berkely and Ms Justice Gráinne Malone.