Journalists’ text messages and call-details have been accessed from the mobile phone of a Garda officer who is under investigation on suspicion of leaking information to the media.

The officer was sanctioned to speak to the media at the time and had been ordered to do so.

There has been disquiet in policing and media circles that the officer has been subjected to a criminal investigation rather than an internal disciplinary inquiry.

Serious crime

The monitoring of journalists’ telephone calls has also always been politically sensitive because the practice has traditionally been reserved for matters of State security or serious crime.

The criminal investigation into the officer began over suspicions he was the source of a news report that two children from the Roma community had been taken from their families and not returned until DNA proved who their parents were.

The children were removed after concerned people told the Garda that the colour of the children’s hair and eyes called their Roma ethnicity into question.

Separately, it has also emerged that, as well as the criminal investigation into the Garda officer, an internal disciplinary inquiry is also being carried out by a chief superintendent, four inspectors and one sergeant.

The officer at the centre of the inquiry was arrested in May but released without charge after being held overnight.

He remains suspended, with the criminal investigation continuing.

The new developments have emerged 48 hours after Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan was forced to defend the assignment of her husband, Det Supt Jim McGowan, to the criminal investigation into the officer.

Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald was also asked about this at the same Garda passing-out ceremony at the Garda College, Templemore, Co Tipperary, on Thursday and appeared taken aback at the questioning.

“You’re making a lot of assumptions in that question,” she told one reporter who asked if she had knowledge of journalists’ phones being monitored as part of the inquiry into the Garda officer.

“I certainly don’t have any information about the monitoring of any journalists in this country,” she added.

Commissioner O’Sullivan insisted journalists’ telephones were not being monitored or tapped.

Conflict of interest

When Commissioner O’Sullivan was asked if there was a conflict of interest in her assigning her husband to the team carrying out the investigation, she said he had his own career in the force.

Ms Fitzgerald declined to respond to questions on the assigning of Det Supt McGowan to the inquiry.