inciting strangers to rape a female colleague.<\/a><\/p>\nJudge Comerford said that it was a \u201cvery serious offence for Mr Flanagan to disclose PULSE information during the course of his duties\u201d between January and September 2020 to his friend, Colm Meere (45) of Knockanean, Tulla Road, Ennis.<\/p>\n
\u201cA garda\u2019s role is to protect society and women in society\u201d, the judge said, but Flanagan had engaged in \u201crepeated criminality\u201d in providing the strictly-confidential data on the women concerned.<\/p>\n
Meere, who pleaded guilty to inciting Flanagan to give out the unauthorised PULSE data, was given a 14-month suspended prison term by the judge.<\/p>\n
Flanagan \u2013 appearing in court via video-link from the Midlands Prison \u2013 and Meere had pleaded guilty to sample counts concerning the unauthorised disclosure of PULSE data on 14 female motorists between January and September 2020.<\/p>\n
Judge Comerford said that Meere, who is a married father-of-two, had engaged in \u201ccreepy\u201d behaviour in seeking out the information so he could view the Facebook profile photos.<\/p>\n
The circumstances around the offending \u201cbrings a level of disgrace and shame\u201d, the judge added.<\/p>\n
At garda interview, Meere said: \u201cI have a wife and kids and obviously I shouldn\u2019t have been doing what I was doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He told garda\u00ed that it was \u201cstupid, male, egotistical behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Comerford said that there was no evidence of Meere making contact with the women online, making Facebook friend requests or seeking them out.<\/p>\n
Judge Comerford said that an alarming feature of the case is that the garda from whom Meere was obtaining the PULSE data \u201cwas someone who committed some very sinister and obsessive offences of a sexual nature\u201d that he was sentenced for last year.<\/p>\n
The judge said that there was no evidence before the court that Meere knew anything about Flanagan\u2019s more serious offending.<\/p>\n
Inspector Paul English told the court that the unauthorised PULSE data offences came to light as part of the separate garda investigation into Flanagan inciting others to rape a colleague.<\/p>\n
The investigation involved the seizure of Flanagan\u2019s mobile phone. It showed that Flanagan had 2,212 screenshots of PULSE records on his mobile phone.<\/p>\n
The garda investigation uncovered chats between then-garda Flanagan and Meere.<\/p>\n
The chats showed Meere over a nine-month period making requests of Flanagan to get the names of registered owners of cars driven by women he had seen at different locations from the registration plates provided by Meere.<\/p>\n
Meere\u2019s wife was in court to hear the State lay out the details of the case.<\/p>\n
In one exchange between Flanagan and Meere, one female car owner is described by Meere as \u201ca blond from Feakle and a cracker\u201d.<\/p>\n
In another exchange, Meere, after seeing a profile pic on Facebook of a female driver, said \u201cher profile picture isn\u2019t too shabby \u2013 like her pants were painted onto her\u201d.<\/p>\n
In response, Flanagan said: \u201cShe has some arse on her now to be fair. She is a teacher now\u201d and in response Meere texted back \u201cshe can teach me anything she wants to teach me\u201d.<\/p>\n
In another exchange, Flanagan told Meere that the registered owner of a car that Meere supplied the details of is a man.<\/p>\n
In response, Meere texted to say \u201cthere wasn\u2019t a man driving this \u2013 some f**king sex change of a doctor did a serious job on this if it is\u201d.<\/p>\n
Counsel for the State, Sarah Jane Comerford BL, said that all of the women had been contacted to see if they wished to make a victim impact statement but none of them elected to do so.<\/p>\n
Counsel for Flanagan, Mark Nicholas SC told the court that the two friends had engaged in \u201csilly, ridiculous, wrong, laddish type behaviour and it is absolutely right that it be stamped out\u201d.<\/p>\n
Flanagan\u2019s defence said that what went on was \u201cutterly, utterly inappropriate\u201d.<\/p>\n
Counsel for Meere, Patrick Whyms BL, said that his client is \u201cshocked, ashamed and appalled at his behaviour\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judge Comerford imposed a separate suspended 18-month prison term on Meere after he pleaded guilty to a drug trafficking offence where on 14 April 2022 he had in his possession at Henry Street Garda Station, Limerick a tick list, bag sealer, tin foil, scissors, baggies and a mobile phone, in circumstances where there was a reasonable inference that the items were in his possession or control for a purpose in connection with drug trafficking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DISGRACED EX-GARDA SHANE Flanagan engaged in \u201crepeated criminality\u201d by supplying confidential PULSE identification data on 14 female motorists…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":626687,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[45,266121,111707,54,26809,228811,61,60,43,266122,266123],"class_list":["post-626686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-an-garda-siochana","tag-colm-meere","tag-county-clare","tag-courts","tag-ennis","tag-ennis-circuit-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-pulse-system","tag-shane-flanagan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}