Presidential candidate Mr Derek Nally has denied a suggestion that his private investigation companies would illegally tap telephones. He issued a statement yesterday in response to an article in yesterday's Ireland on Sunday. The article "insinuates that the two companies of which Mr Nally is chairman and managing director `bugged' telephones. Mr Nally wants to state categorically that they do not," it said. According to Mr Nally his firms had not been asked to "bug" a telephone for the past three years, until last week when their offices in Bunclody, Co Wexford, and Dublin received four telephone inquiries in which the callers variously asked for the telephones of a wife, a girlfriend and an employee to be "bugged".
"The callers were told that the companies do not `bug' phones nor conduct marital investigations. `Bugging' and `tapping' implies that telephone conversations are intercepted and recorded without the knowledge of the person whose phone it is. To do that is illegal. That has not been done and will not be done by any one of Mr Nally's companies."
The statement added that to record telephone calls "with the consent and at the behest of the owner/subscriber of the line" is legal. "It is used in order to investigate matters like abusive and obscene phone calls and fraud within companies".
The statement noted an article in the newspaper which detailed a conversation between its reporter and an employee of Secureway (Northern Ireland), where Mr Nally is a non-executive director with a 34 per cent shareholding.
"It is clear from the transcript of this recorded conversation that the Northern company was resisting the suggestion from the Ireland on Sunday reporter that it should tap the home phone of an employee of a firm. This would be illegal. Secureway NI was prepared to record the traffic on the phone of the firm in question at the request of the owner/subscriber, which would be quite legal. The directors of the companies will be discussing the article with their legal representatives in the immediate future."