Leading defence solicitor Frank Buttimer has counselled against any overreaction to the news that phone calls were being recorded at Garda stations and said he didn’t believe it would lead to a wave of applications in the courts to have cases reviewed.
Mr Buttimer said he agreed it was unacceptable that there were recordings of calls in and out of Garda stations, but added that people should wait until a review is carried out by whichever retired judge is appointed by the Government before jumping to any conclusions.
“I think people are exaggerating the implications completely – I have thought about the issue for the past two days since the news has emerged and I think the reaction, I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s hysterical but I would certainly say it’s completely exaggerated,” he said.
“Critically, that reaction of an exaggerated nature is to be laid at the feet of any colleague of mine who says that all these people are going to have all their cases reviewed as if there were going to be murderers and rapists traipsing around the street,” he said.
Stressing that he would view any recording of communications between a client and a solicitor as an invasion of constitutionally protected privilege of solicitor-client confidentiality, Mr Buttimer said he had no personal knowledge of any such an intrusion in his 30 years in professional practice.
However, solicitor John McBurney, who represented the family of the late RUC officer Harry Breen during the Smithwick tribunal investigation, said yesterday that the commission must seek to establish were there Garda tapes available that related to the 1989 murders of the two officers who were shot close to the Border in south Armagh.