The Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell, yesterday denied he personally ordered a Garda investigation into how information on an assault on his teenage son was leaked to a national newspaper.
A spokesman for the Minister said the investigation was not ordered by Mr McDowell. "It is an internal Garda matter," he said.
The Star in April printed a story about an attack on Mr McDowell's 14-year-old son close to the family home in Ranelagh. The attack came at a time when the Minister was under considerable pressure to increase the number of gardaí in an effort to crack down on street violence.
The Minister's son is understood to have told his father he did not want to report the incident to gardaí for fear of it appearing in the media. After some days the teenager, following encouragement from his father, went to a local Garda station and made a statement.
The next day a reporter from the Star rang the Minister's office with queries relating to the teenager's Garda statement. The Minister was said to be livid and rang gardaí to complain that information regarding a sensitive issue, about which his son had been reluctant to make a statement for fear of leaks, had been leaked within 24 hours.
A few days after the Minister made the complaint The Star ran the story. Gardaí have now begun an internal investigation and the Star's crime correspondent Michael O'Toole has been told he is to be interviewed by a senior detective about his information.
The inquiry is to go ahead under the Official Secrets Act.
In an article in yesterday's Star, the editor, Mr Ger Colleran, condemned the Garda investigation. "It is frivolous in the extreme, unnecessary and wasteful of what are, because of the failure of this Minister and Government to recruit 2,000 extra officers, scarce Garda resources".
Fine Gael's justice spokesman, Mr John Deasy, said yesterday that while the Star and other media outlets "generally handle information responsibly" the "temptation to sensationalise" stories was often over riding common sense.
"I think something like this is in the private domain and while I can understand why a newspaper would go after the story, if there is a free for all we will lose our standards. I think we have to be careful. People who may have an interest in going into politics might take a look at the wider picture and decide that it is just not worth it."
He said a reporter had contacted him last week and was "able to tell me where I was at a particular time last Wednesday night". Mr Deasy was out for a night with friends.
He had spoken on the Government's proposals for pub opening hours and believed the line of questioning suggested he had acted hypocritically in staying out late.
