FORMER JUSTICE MINISTER Alan Shatter has released a statement on the report into alleged bugging at the Garda Siochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC)’s offices.
The Cooke Report, which was published yesterday, found that there is no evidence that GSOC was bugged by gardaí.
Shatter opened his statement by welcoming the publication of the report. He said it was clear that retired High Court Judge John Cooke “took the time he required to properly conduct his review in accordance with his terms of reference, that he fully engaged with GSOC and also applied fair procedures in the conduct of his inquiry”.
He continued:
I previously addressed these matters in detail as Minister for Justice in Dail Eireann on both 11 and 18 February and before the Joint Oireachtas Petitions Committee on the 19 February.I did so on the basis of information then available to me as received from GSOC, including their technical reports and a technical peer review of those reports commissioned by the Department of Justice.I reported to the House GSOC’s own conclusions that “no definitive evidence of unauthorised technical or electronic surveillance was uncovered” with regard to their offices.I also recounted that there was no identified connection between any member of An Garda Siochana and any of these matters, GSOC having in their own press release stated that “there was no evidence of Garda misconduct”.
I dealt with these matters in a straightforward, truthful and comprehensive way.
In doing so, I also detailed the statutory obligation of GSOC to inform the Minister for Justice of progress made in and the conclusions of any public interest investigation undertaken pursuant to Section 102 of the Garda Siochana Act 2005.
I welcome the conclusions of Judge Cooke on all of these matters.
Shatter said that Cooke’s dealing with matters “was clearly in the public interest”.
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