An investigative officer with Eircom could not explain to the Morris tribunal how a record of an incoming hoax telephone call made from the home of a Donegal garda could be uncovered by a private detective when official searches conducted at the request of Garda HQ returned negative results on the same request three times.
Thomas Corbett, a senior investigative officer with Eircom, said technical and software problems meant that searches for incoming calls were unsuccessful at the time, although searches for outgoing calls succeeded.
Michael Durack SC, for the Garda Commissioner, asked how it was that Billy Flynn, a private detective hired by Raphoe nightclub owner Frank McBrearty snr, could obtain the information.
"It appears that sometime in the summer 1997 a private investigator was in a position to provide to the garda commissioner details of the numbers where the calls had emanated," Mr Durack said.
"If incoming calls aren't available, you are suggesting that the only way someone could provide this information was by searching the billing system," he added. "That would require that person to have known where the call came from before they went to look for it. And it appears that nobody did."
"Well, I can't answer that one, sir," Mr Corbett said. "I have no explanation. . . Forensic people have come along and said this is what happened, there was no incoming calls available." The call was made from the home of former Raphoe Garda, John O'Dowd, on November 9th, 1996. Four other calls were made from the home of his informer, William Doherty, on the same night.
Garda O'Dowd says his informer made all the calls to Mr Michael Peoples, who reported them to the Garda the night he received them, and the next day handed in a recording of one call to the local barracks when he made a statement.
The Garda request was forwarded in December 1996 from Garda HQ to Mr Corbett, then in the investigative section of An Post. From there, the request was sent to Telecom Éireann. But no record existed of this request at the Portlaoise offices of the phone company, which handled provincial records.
A Garda reminder after Mr Flynn showed them the information he obtained in June 1997 led initially to negative results on two occasions, before a search of outgoing calls from Mr Doherty's home revealed those calls. In January 1998, Garda O'Dowd handed over his phone bill showing a call from his home.
Tribunal barrister Mr Peter Charleton SC said that according to an independent report, phone records disappeared because of "the chaotic nature of the systems at the time".
Mr Corbett said: "[Information] wasn't saved on to tapes or anything like that during the transitional period. Those calls were dropped. They were lost."
Mr Charleton said the report concluded that "on the balance of probability it is unlikely that any attempt to suppress information occurred within Telecom Éireann."