Colley `feared phone taps on Cabinet'

A former minister, Mr Martin O'Donoghue, has alleged that he was told by a fellow minister, Mr George Colley, that the telephones of a number of people in the 1982 Cabinet were tapped.

On Sunday night the former Progressive Democrats leader, Mr Des O'Malley, said the head of the IDA, Mr Michael Killeen, had delivered a similar warning to him when he came to his home.

The handwritten note passed on by Mr Killeen, which allegedly emerged from within the Garda Siochana, declared that Mr O'Malley's telephone and those of other ministers had been tapped.

Yesterday Mr O'Donoghue, who served as minister for education until he quit in October 1982, said Mr Colley had told him "to be careful" about what he said on the telephone.

In his first public comment on the allegations since then, Mr O'Donoghue went on: "He said he had reason to believe on very good grounds that the telephones were tapped. He did not give me the evidence. I can't say it surprised me.

"You would have had to be around at the time to fully understand. The fact that somebody was tapping my telephone was one of my lesser worries, I can assure you," he said.

After he took over as minister for justice, the current leader of Fine Gael, Mr Michael Noonan, revealed that two journalists, Geraldine Kennedy and Bruce Arnold, had had their phones tapped on the orders of his predecessor, Mr Sean Doherty, of Fianna Fail.

He also revealed that another member of the 1982 Cabinet, Mr Ray MacSharry, had taped a conversation with Mr O'Donoghue about the financial health of a number of Fianna Fail people.

However, Mr Noonan's 1983 Dail report made no mention of illegal interceptions of politicians' calls and yesterday he indicated that there had been no records in the Department of Justice in 1983 to suggest otherwise.

Speaking at the opening of an extension in Dublin Zoo yesterday, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said he had not seen the second episode in RTE's four-part Des O'Malley: A Public Life series. However, he was aware that Mr O'Malley had claimed in the programme that Mr Haughey had demanded "total, abject loyalty" from Fianna Fail TDs and ministers during his leadership.

Disagreeing, Mr Ahern said: "Not at all. Mr Haughey was the leader. I think it was the same support that any leader has. No more than that."

Last night Mr Noonan pointed out that Mr O'Malley had not said his telephone had been tapped: "He did say that Mr Killeen had told him that his telephone was tapped and that he [Mr Killeen] had received this information from police circles."

Once he had taken over in Justice, Mr Noonan said, he had asked officials to review all telephone taps to see if any had been authorised contrary "to the procedures, practices and precedents of that time".

"The only two that were identified in the review were those on Geraldine Kennedy and Bruce Arnold. The principal test at the time was that information might be accessed that could help the gardai in the detection of terrorist activity and other serious crimes.

"It is obvious that any taps on the telephones of Cabinet ministers at that time could not have satisfied that test," a spokesman for Mr Noonan told The Irish Times.