No criminal would ever again need to wear a balaclava if prosecutors were prevented from using CCTV footage in court, a barrister has told the Special Criminal Court trial of four men accused of abducting and assaulting Quinn Industrial Holdings director Kevin Lunney.
Sean Guerin SC, for the Director of Public Prosecutions, said lawyers for the accused were asking the court to rule out CCTV evidence that was lawfully obtained by gardaí investigating a serious crime.
The footage, counsel said, was the fruit of specific lines of inquiry arising from findings in the investigation.
The suggestion the footage should be excluded on privacy grounds, he said, is "manifestly contrary to the maintenance of social order".
Mr Guerin also dismissed as "fanciful" and "preposterous" a defence suggestion that the CCTV footage could have been edited or interfered with prior to gardai accessing it.
He said counsel for the defence is suggesting that there is a sub-community of business owners and managers across the country, from Dublin to Cavan, with editing skills that would be "the envy of every Hollywood studio" who are inserting footage of a Renault Kangoo van with a distinctive red lightning bolt on the side at precisely the times when the prosecution alleges that particular van was used in the abduction of Mr Lunney.
If the court wanted an example of the difference between a reasonable versus a fanciful doubt, Mr Guerin said the defence in this case has provided it.
Lawyers for two of the accused have asked the court to rule the CCTV evidence as inadmissible.
They argued that gardaí are using CCTV footage from private operators to conduct mass surveillance of the population which, they said, is a breach of constitutional and privacy rights and data protection regulations.
