A bin lorry driver and his wife have been granted an injunction in the High Court restraining any garda from entering their home except under the authority of a warrant or at the request of a member of the household.
Stephen Costello (34), who is also a part-time second-hand car dealer, and his wife, Karen, of Woodstown Gardens, Woodstown, Rathfarnham, Co Dublin, told the court he and his wife were victims of a campaign of Garda harassment and intimidation. "Such is the nature of repeated, unwarranted and illegal intrusion that neighbours have shunned my family and me, having been led by gardaí to believe I am something I am not," Mr Costello said in an affidavit.
He said gardaí often entered his property with a view to obtaining registration numbers of cars parked in the grounds of the family home.
Martin Giblin SC, for Mr Costello, said his client continued to be held up to odium, ridicule and contempt in the eyes of right-thinking members of society by reason of Garda activities.
Mr Costello told Ms Justice Mary Finlay Geoghegan he was not a person with a criminal past or present which would entitle gardaí to believe he was a person of ill repute. Over recent months he had been repeatedly stopped and searched for illicit substances and none had been found.
Judge Finlay Geoghegan said the Garda affidavit had made no reference to any suspicion of criminal activity or if the force considered its alleged level of activity necessary or warranted whether well founded or not. She granted an interlocutory injunction restraining gardaí until the hearing of a trial in which Mr Costello seeks damages and fuller restraints against the Garda.