Garda phone recordings scandal

Not to be confused with the Irish phone tapping scandal, revealed in 1982.

The Garda phone recordings scandal was a political scandal in Ireland resulting from the widespread practice of recording phone calls to and from Garda Síochána police stations from the 1980s to November 2013. The practice was revealed in March 2014.[1][2][3]

The scandal unfolded while Fine Gael and the Labour Party were in office, though the time period involved also covered successive governments during which Fianna Fáil, the Green Party and the Progressive Democrats were all in power. Among those implicated in the scandal were the then Taoiseach Enda Kenny, justice minister Alan Shatter, Secretary General of the Department of Justice Brian Purcell, Secretary General of the Department of the Taoiseach Martin Fraser, attorney general Máire Whelan, Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan, as well as Independent News & Media, Ireland's largest and most powerful media organisation.

Multiple commentators invoked the term GUBU (grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented) to describe the Garda phone recordings controversy.[4][5] GUBU is an acronym particular to Hiberno-English, denoting superlative infamy and drawing comparisons to the original GUBU scandal. Shane Phelan, Public Affairs Editor at the Irish Independent commented "it is now safe to say we have finally reached GUBU territory",[4] while Michael Clifford of the Irish Examiner observed "More than 30 years after the original GUBU moment, here was another one."[6]

  1. ^ Kelly, Fiach (25 March 2014). "Inquiry set up into taped phone calls at Garda stations". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 25 March 2014. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  2. ^ Sheahan, Fionnan (25 March 2014). "Major revelations on recording of conversations in Garda stations". Irish Independent. Archived from the original on 26 March 2014. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  3. ^ "Irish inquiry: Concerns over Gardai secret phone recordings". BBC News. 25 March 2014. Archived from the original on 26 March 2014. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  4. ^ a b Phelan, Shane (26 March 2014). "GUBU barely does justice to a scandal as shocking as this". Irish Independent. Archived from the original on 28 March 2014. Retrieved 26 March 2014.
  5. ^ O'Malley, Eoin (26 March 2014). "New politics? It's more a case of 1983 all over again". Irish Independent. Archived from the original on 28 March 2014. Retrieved 26 March 2014.
  6. ^ Clifford, Michael (26 March 2014). "Another grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, unprecedented moment with echoes of the past". Irish Examiner. Archived from the original on 10 April 2014. Retrieved 28 March 2014.