MR Hugh Tunney, the lessor of Sachs Hotel, Dublin, will appeal a High Court order giving leave to Mr Philip Smyth, who leases the hotel, to apply to the English courts to have two British police detectives examined about alleged anonymous phone calls.

Yesterday, Mr Justice McCracken in the High Court was told the appeal had been lodged in the Supreme Court.

Mr Smyth, a director of Genport Ltd, claimed the phone calls alleged he was laundering drug money for the IRA through the hotel and that his brother, now a Garda chief superintendent, assisted him. In the claim made through Genport, Mr Smyth alleged the calls were made on telephone lines listed in the names of Tunney Meats and/or Mr Tunney.

Crofter Properties Ltd, of which Mr Tunney is a director, has brought an action claiming Genport failed to pay rent on Sachs Hotel between August 1993 and November 1995. It also denied all the allegations.

Genport counterclaimed there were reasons justifying non payment including its present claim for damages arising out of the alleged phone calls.