A private investigator has been fined a total of €5,000 after being convicted of illegally accessing personal information held by gardaí, in breach of data protection legislation.
Michael Gaynor, trading as MJG Investigations, had pleaded guilty to another 69 charges.
One of the charges against him was dismissed.
Gaynor from Beatty Grove, Celbridge, Co Kildare, was prosecuted at the Dublin District Court following an investigation by the office of the Data Protection Commissioner.
He was charged with breaking 72 counts of the Data Protection Act, from May until October last year.
Gaynor has admitted that, without authorisation, he got facts on nine other people; in these instances the data controller was the Electricity Supply Board and the information was passed on to others.
He also pleaded guilty to the remaining 60 charges that he processed information without authorisation on several people in circumstances where he was not recorded in the register established and maintained under the Data Protection Act.
Senior Counsel for the Data Protection Commissioner Remy Farrell told the court today that Gaynor had allegedly provided tracing reports to three credit unions, in Balbriggan, Lucan and Citybus Credit Union, on individuals they hoped to take action against for non-payment of debts.
He had allegedly obtained the information from Detective Garda Paul Cullen, a member of the Garda National Immigration Bureau, who had "little cause to be accessing information" on the three individuals concerned.
Assistant Data Protection Commissioner Tony Delaney told the court that in an interview at the GNIB headquarters on 18 March 2014, the detective had admitted accessing all the records on the individuals concerned.
The detective said in court he may have "inadvertently" disclosed information to Gaynor after the private detective contacted him, but that he never provided information directly from the screen in front of him when logged into either the PULSE or GNIB databases.
Mr Cullen said that when Gaynor had given him a name, an address or a car number, he would immediately check them on one of the systems available to him.
"He was offering me information," the garda said.
He said he did not confirm any information to the private detective other than to tell him it was "not of interest to the gardaí".
