The senior Garda was part of a team who took two Roma children from their families, with DNA testing later being carried out to determine their parentage. In what proved to be an embarrassing scandal for the authorities, both kids were found to be the biological children of the parents they had been taken from.
Now, the officer has been arrested in connection with his alleged dealings with the media in the case. With a representative from the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) speaking of “unusual aspects” to the case, it has been reported that the officer’s phone records were examined, and his office was also officially searched.
Commenting on the case, NUJ secretary Seamus Dooley said: “It would be important that nothing would happen that would damage the release of information in the public interest.”
A report into the case was published last summer, in which it was stated that information about one of the children involved had “on the balance of probability” been disclosed to a journalist by a Garda officer.
In the report, former Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan described the incident as “deeply troubling and highly regrettable”, claiming that the disclosure of information about one of the children may have amounted to an offence.
The embarrassing scandal was prompted by the Greek case of a five-year-old girl named ‘Maria’, who was taken from her family amid suspicions that she was not their biological relative. DNA testing later identified the child’s real parents, a Bulgarian couple.
