LAST UPDATE | 20 Mar

A PEACE COMMISSIONER and former councillor has been charged with perverting the course of justice and forgery by creating and signing false search warrants for Garda operations in Dublin.

The Garda Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) has been investigating the activities of a particular unit based in the Dublin region.

Two serving gardaí have already appeared before the court.

On Wednesday morning, Steven Wrenn, 50, appeared before Judge Fiona Brennan at Dublin District Court charged with four offences over search warrants allegedly drafted after two properties were searched in 2021.

Mr Wrenn, of Iveragh Road, Whitehall, Dublin, was granted €200 bail and ordered to appear again on May 7 to enter a plea.

The former Labour Party councillor is accused of making a false instrument, a search warrant and information between September 30 and December 29, 2021, used to induce another person to accept it as genuine for a search carried out on September 7, 2021, of a basement flat at Mountjoy Square, Dublin.

He is also accused of making another false instrument between August 28 and December 20, 2021, a warrant for a search on June 19 at Kenilworth Road, Dublin 6.

It is also alleged that over the same two time periods, he twice perverted the course of public justice by signing the warrants.

ACU Detective Garda Simon Warnock told Judge Brennan the accused “made no reply” when charged on March 12 at Clontarf Garda station.

He confirmed directions from the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) have been received for summary disposal in the District Court if the accused pleads guilty.

This means that if Mr Wrenn contests the charges, the case will go to the Circuit Court, which has wider sentencing powers.

The accused stood silently throughout the brief hearing.

Judge Brennan noted there was no objection to bail, and the ACU detective did not require conditions.

She ordered Mr Wrenn to appear again on May 7 and acceded to a request from the defendant’s solicitor to make an order for the disclosure of 17 items of evidence.

On Tuesday, arising out of the same investigation, Garda Sergeant Ciaran Whelan, who had worked out of Store Street station in Dublin, appeared at the same court charged with seven offences from June 19 until September 27, 2021.

Garda Sergeant Whelan, who has an address in Nenagh, Co Tipperary, is accused of false imprisonment of a named woman at St John’s Road West, Dublin 8, on September 7.

It is alleged he did acts to pervert the course of public justice by making a false report between August 25 and September 15 to a named Garda Superintendent regarding a search of a male’s flat on Kenilworth Road, Dublin 6, on June 19.

He is charged with burglary at that flat by entering it as a trespasser to commit a theft offence.

He is also accused of perverting the course of justice on September 27 by amending data on the Garda Pulse System about two incidents.

He is accused of twice perverting the course of public justice on August 28 by allegedly creating and printing a warrant and information for a search on June 19 at the flat in Kenilworth Road, Dublin, 6.

It is further alleged that he created an incident on the Garda Pulse system related to that search on the same date.

He is charged that on September 7, he trespassed at a basement flat at Mountjoy Square, North, Dublin 1, to commit theft.

Garda Mark Duffy, 39, also appeared at Dublin District Court last week. He is accused of doing an act between August 28 and December 20, 2021, intending to pervert the course of public justice.

The officer with a Dublin 15 address is also accused of burglary. In this offence, he is alleged to have entered the same Kenilworth Road flat as a trespasser on June 19, 2021, to commit an arrestable offence.

Both garda defendants, who have yet to indicate pleas, are due to appear again on May 17 to be served with books of evidence.

The DPP directed “trial on indictment” in their cases, which will be dealt with at the Circuit Court level.