Text messages between Limerick hurler Se\u00e1n Finn and a garda superintendent about an alleged speeding offence have been shown to a jury in the trial of the superintendent, Eamon O’Neill, and four garda\u00ed who are charged with perverting the course of justice by intervening in road traffic prosecutions.<\/p>\n
A text message sent from four-time All-Star hurler Mr Finn’s phone to Superintendent O’Neill, who is retired, said: “Just got pulled in outside secondary school in Bruff for speed.<\/p>\n
“Anything can be done or am I snookered kid?”<\/p>\n
In text messages over and back between the pair, which were shown to the court, Supt O\u2019Neill asked the hurler for a description of the garda who had stopped him and if he had the garda\u2019s “shoulder number”.<\/p>\n
A thread of text messages between two of the defendants, Supt O\u2019Neill and Garda Tom McGlinchey, were also shown to the jury.<\/p>\n
The message from Mr Finn to Supt O\u2019Neill was forwarded to Mr McGlinchey, who the court heard then replied: “Who\u2019s that from?”<\/p>\n
Superintendent O\u2019Neill replied “Se\u00e1n Finn”, to which Garda McGlinchey responded “stopped by a guard? Hardly Bruff garda\u00ed? I will check”.<\/p>\n
A video recording of an interview conducted by detectives from the Garda National Bureau of Criminal Investigation with Garda McGlinchey at Mayorstone Garda Station on 7 October 2019 was shown to the jury.<\/p>\n
Garda McGlinchey told the detectives that he had received a phone call from Supt O\u2019Neill while he was attending a football match.<\/p>\n
“He asked me did I know who was working in the Bruff area on that night, that someone had been stopped for speeding,” he told detectives.<\/p>\n
“He gave me the name Se\u00e1n Finn, who I know to be a Limerick hurler and he asked me to make a request on his behalf,” he added.<\/p>\n
The court heard Garda McGlinchey contacted Bruff Garda Station. He spoke to a garda from the traffic unit and made the request “on behalf of Supt O\u2019Neill”.<\/p>\n
The court heard that Mr Finn ultimately paid a speeding fine in respect of the summons.<\/p>\n
The court was also told about text messages sent by Supt O\u2019Neill to Garda McGlinchey about potential road traffic offences on a number of dates in 2019.<\/p>\n
Garda McGlinchey told the detectives he did not know the people connected to these matters.<\/p>\n
During the course of the interview, Garda McGlinchey told detectives that he had known Supt O’Neill for a number of years and they had been involved in football teams together.<\/p>\n
Garda McGlinchey was described in court as “a very straight person” and “a good old fashioned garda in a rural area” by Superintendent John Ryan who worked with Garda McGlinchey in Bruff, Co Limerick in 2019, and is now based in Clare.<\/p>\n
In his evidence to the jury, Supt Ryan said Garda McGlinchey had been “a huge loss” when he was suspended from the force to deal with these charges.<\/p>\n
He also described Garda Colm Geary, who is also a defendant in the case, as “a very solid, very skilled member”, who was “hugely respected” by colleagues and the community where he was based in Ennis.<\/p>\n
Former garda superintendent O’Neill, Garda McGlinchey, Garda Geary, Sergeant Anne Marie Hassett and Sergeant Michelle Leahy have pleaded not guilty to a total of 39 offences of engaging in conduct tending and intended to pervert the course of justice contrary to common law on dates between October 2016 and September 2019.<\/p>\n
The trial continues before Judge Roderick Maguire at Limerick Circuit Court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Text messages between Limerick hurler Se\u00e1n Finn and a garda superintendent about an alleged speeding offence have been…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217909,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-217908","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115670546013830939","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217908","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}