The Kevin Lunney abduction trial will resume tomorrow after the Special Criminal Court decided to allow mobile phone and CCTV evidence to be included.
Four men are accused of falsely imprisoning and causing serious harm to the director of Quinn Industrial Holdings in September 2019.
The defence teams challenged the admissibility of mobile phone and CCTV evidence on the grounds that it breached their clients’ rights to privacy.
They also argued that the general retention of phone data by service providers is unlawful and claimed gardaí shouldn’t have been allowed to access it.
During lengthy legal arguments, they put forward their case that there was nothing in place to ensure their client’s rights were upheld.
However, the non-jury court ruled against them on every challenge, aside from a couple of pieces of CCTV footage.
Referring to European Court of Justice rulings, Mr J Tony Hunt said the retention of certain mobile phone data is permissible for the investigation of serious crime.
The court also disagreed that the use of private CCTV systems amounted to mass surveillance by gardaí.
