McDowell must explain failure to act on child porn ring information - Cuffe

Press Release: Justice 9 February 2007

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9 February 2007

McDowell must explain failure to act on child porn ring information – Cuffe

The Minister for Justice Michael McDowell must explain the failure of An Garda Síochána to act on information linking Irish people to a global pornography ring, said the Green Party today. Green Party Justice spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe TD asked whether the resources are in place to deal with the quantity of information arriving in Garda Headquarters, and the ability of An Garda Síochána to communicate using modern technology.

Deputy Cuffe said: "It is entirely unacceptable that the Gardaí chose not to respond to the information from the Austrian authorities sent through the Interpol communications network back in August of 2006. I am calling on the Minister for Justice to explain how the decision was made to ignore this vital information, and to outline the steps that both he and the Garda Commissioner will be taking to ensure that this does not happen again.

"Yesterday's lack of clarity from Garda Headquarters as to whether this transmission was or was not received does little to quell my concerns that communications systems within An Garda Síochána are not operating as they should be. It was only due to media pressure that we eventually got a straight answer. It appears that An Garda Síochána has not been allocated the resources to keep apace with technological advances in recent years. For example, the general public cannot report crime via email, whereas in the North of Ireland this is commonplace."