Dominic Hannigan (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State. I wish to raise the issue of the failure of the Garda Síochána to return the personal effects of a gentleman who was murdered in Gorey in 1994. I supplied the name of the gentleman to the Seanad Office. In the years since the murder, the Garda held on to the personal effects of the victim, specifically items of clothing and a wristwatch. The investigation into the murder was exhausted a number of years ago, and a situation was reached whereby the Garda and the DPP agreed to close the investigation.

Since that decision was made, the victim's widow has been trying to get her husband's personal effects returned. However, she has met with delays and inaction on the part of the Garda. I have been working on this case with the widow since early 2007. In December 2007, we were delighted to get the news that the Garda had managed to locate the victim's clothing, and the victim's widow went to Gorey in February 2008 to take possession of her husband's clothes. However, his wristwatch was still missing. We continued to press the Garda to locate this watch, as it was taken from the victim as a key piece of evidence during the murder investigation. We were convinced that it must be somewhere and that due process had been followed by the Garda.

Following numerous letters and phone calls that went all the way to the Garda Commissioner, we were eventually told in September 2008 that the watch had been located. The widow returned to Gorey to collect the watch, but it was not the right one. The Minister of State might have been briefed to state the widow might be mistaken and that time dulls the memory, but that watch was a wedding present from the widow to the victim, and there is a distinctive mark on the watch of which the widow is aware but the gardaí are not. She is absolutely sure that watch was not the watch she gave to her husband on their wedding day.

I do not know who really owns the watch presented to her by the gardaí, or whether it was in their possession for a day, a week, a month or ten years, but the clear fact is that it was the wrong watch. When we pointed this out to the Garda Síochána, a liaison officer was appointed last December, and there has been one meeting since then with the widow, but no resolution.

At this stage, it looks like the watch has been mislaid, lost or removed for one reason or another. A mistake has been made, so in order to allow the widow some kind of resolution to this sad affair, all we are asking is for some sort of apology to be made, and for the Garda to own up to the fact that a mistake has been made. There is a number of precedents for this in the past. An apology should be offered in the interests of fairness and so that justice is finally served.