The Green Party MEP, Ms Patricia McKenna, last night called for a Government response to a report that British intelligence services have been electronically intercepting telephone calls to and from the Republic.
There was no comment from Government sources last night on the report on Channel 4 news. The report claimed the specific role of a a reputed British intelligence services listening post was to eavesdrop on telecommunications across the Irish Sea.
The post, a 13-storey-high steel tower which is being sold off by the Ministry of Defence, was erected in 1988. It is on a direct line between British Telecom (BT) microwave towers in the north of England which handle cross-Irish Sea telecommunications traffic.
The Channel 4 report, based on research by the investigative journalist, Duncan Campbell, also met a non-committal response from the British Ministry for Defence and Home Office, which said only that anyone with a complaint about telephone interceptions could make their complaint to a tribunal set up to handle such matters.
Mr Campbell has been prosecuted in the past by the British Government under the Official Secrets Act for his work.
On last night's programme, he reported that a temporary listening post was originally built on a site at British Nuclear Fuel's enrichment plant in Cumbria after the fibre-optic telecommunications cable was laid between Portmarnock, in north Co Dublin, and Britain in 1988. This listening post was then replaced by the 13-storey structure at Capenhurst, in Cheshire at a cost of Stg£20 million and was operational by 1989. It closed down last year. Mr Campbell said it was probably closed because most of the telecommunications traffic is now transmitted via fibre optic cable. He presumed the Capenhurst post had been replaced by some new form of listening equipment.
He said there were two stations situated at Drumadd army barracks in Armagh and in Cornwall near Bude which also have the capability of eavesdropping on cross-Irish Sea communications and international telecommunications from the Republic.
In a statement last night, Ms McKenna called for the Government to respond immediately to the report adding: "Such a situation poses alarming consequences not just for the basic civil liberties of the Irish public but also for the Irish economy. "Economic information as well as diplomatic information must be extremely vulnerable to such tapping techniques. Those who could access sensitive economic information would gain great advantage in economic matters."
The issue of electronic surveillance of telecommunications from the Republic has been around for a long time. The British intelligence services are believed to have had the ability to eavesdrop on international telecommunications traffic from the Republic for many years. They are thought to have previously used facilities including the GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) at Cheltenham. The British authorities are understood to have had the ability to intercept telephone, fax, telex and data transmissions under interception systems known as MAGNUM and ECHELON. According to certain sources, these highly powerful interception systems have, for years, been able to identify and select certain voices among the proliferation of international calls. This has never been verified.