The Garda Commissioner has ordered an internal inquiry into how videotaped footage of two men speeding along a major national road in Co Westmeath was handed to RTÉ News.
Noel Conroy has appointed a chief superintendent - who has yet to be named but will be from outside the Longford-Westmeath Garda Divison - to head the inquiry.
Earlier today, the district court judge who sentenced the men yesterday branded the conduct of members of the Garda in discussing evidence and possibly releasing material related to the case yesterday as "scandalous".
Judge John Neilan told Granard District Court a video taken by the two men on a camcorder of themselves driving at speeds of up to 200km/h had been given to RTÉ and was shown on the Nine O'Clock Newslast night, even though the video was not produced by the prosecution during the case.
Alberto Rizzini of Port Loman, Mullingar, and Tommie Gorman of Milltown Pass, Co Westmeath, were each fined €2,000 by Judge Neilan at Mullingar District Court yesterday.
Judge Neilan told Granard District Court this morning he wanted to make reference to the furore resulting from the case of Mr Gorman and Mr Rizzini. He told the court he was appalled by the conduct of gardaí investigating the case.
Judge Neilan said material seized by gardaí belonged to the court, and that he was calling on Commissioner Conroy to explain how the recording was given to RTÉ when it was not produced in court.
He went on to suggest that there appeared to be certain members of the Garda who believed they had a right to undermine the DPP and generate as much hype as they could.
Judge Neilan said he believed the evidence of the arresting officers was tainted and embellished by what they had seen on the camcorder.
Earlier today the chairman of the Road Safety Authority Gay Byrne said he was angered by the sentence, which he said was too lenient and sent out the wrong signal.
Speaking on RTÉ radio this afternoon Mr Byrne said: "We are dealing with people dying on the roads . . . if I or anybody belonging to me, and I riding a motorbike, a one millimetre misjudgment by either of these two buffoons, and the result would have been disaster. And that is unacceptable.
"The focus of attention should be: Are the Gardai lying when they said that these guys were travelling at 120 miles per hour, weaving in around the traffic at night and making a video in the cars while they were doing that. That's the story," he insisted.
"I think it is disgraceful behaviour and I think in the light of those facts that the sentence was appallingly and disgracefully lenient, and the members of the board of the Road Safety Authority all feel the same way."
"I would have banned these guys for at least three years, as well as a fine, and then I would have stacked them with penalty points so that when they came back to driving eventually they would know they had four penalty points before they ran out of time."
On the same programme, solicitor for the two men, John Quinn, said the footage was not used in court because it was of an incident preceding the offence for which they were convicted. He claimed his clients were unfairly vilified by the media through the public airing of the video, which he said should never have been released. "If you go into a court and your case is dealt with and the evidence is presented and then you happen to go to a television programme or the news afterwards and you see a total different scenario presented to the public, how would you feel?" he asked. "There's something improper about that and the improper aspect of it was that somebody in the DPP/Garda end of it released that clip and section of video without appropriate authority and effectively that got to the media. That's wrong," he said.