Sir, - Your front page article (June 10th) regarding the use by senior Gardai of surveillance cameras in Dublin's O'Connell Street to detect and possibly discipline a member of the force who marched in support of the Garda pay claim, while he was officially on sick leave, makes for sad reading. The distaste for seeing these surveillance cameras used in this way is more than outweighed, however, by the disgust at hearing not one peep from those self-appointed guardians of our rights, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
These surveillance cameras are purportedly in position to deter crime and, in the event of a crime having been committed, to possibly identify the culprit(s). There was never any mention of their being utilised as a means of obtaining data on persons who were officially absent from work on sick leave and at the same time out and about.
If these cameras were used to glean similar information on a worker who was not a member of the Garda, it would be impossible to contemplate the ICCL not jumping immediately into the fray to defend the civil rights of our citizens. - Yours, etc., Eamonn Gavin,
Terenure, Dublin 6W.