Liz Doyle - Chris Gordon tried to pull off 'old-fashioned Garda trick'

Liz Doyle accused Chris Gordon of trying to pull off "an old-fashioned Garda trick" by claiming in the High Court on Thursday that the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board's head of security falsified a document before a random stable investigation at her premises in March 2014.

Doyle revealed that she believed Gordon, a former Garda superintendent, had a damaged reputation after the John Hughes steroids scandal and, in an attempt to save face in his role with the IHRB, he tried to entrap the trainer during that inspection.

“I think Mr Gordon had egg on his face because the Department of Agriculture had discovered a trainer, or had discovered someone using anabolic steroids,” Doyle said when asked why she felt Gordon went out of his way to entrap her.

She added: “He had egg on his face because it was on his watch when it happened. My view of it is he was embarrassed within his job and he beefed up evidence. So, instead of walking down my yard with LD written on a document, he walked down with Liz Doyle [on the document] and it would get him where he wanted to be an awful lot quicker.”

When SC Harty, representing Gordon, who initiated the defamation case against the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association in 2014, asked Doyle where she thought Gordon wanted to be, the trainer claimed: “He wanted somebody got on his watch.”

At this point SC Harty queried Doyle as to how she thought he was trying to ‘get’ her.

“He was trying to get me to admit to being involved with John Hughes somehow. I remember asking my mother [Avril Doyle, a former TD], ‘Why would he be doing this?’

“She said to me, ‘It’s an old-fashioned Garda trick to get them to admit to stuff. It’s a shortcut.’”

SC Harty interjected: “It’s an old-fashioned Garda trick? Is your mother an old-fashioned Garda?”

Doyle was also criticised by SC Harty for bringing new evidence to the case – information that was not put to any of his witnesses.

In Noel Meade’s evidence, he claimed Doyle was shown the lodgement document that apparently linked her to Hughes, immediately during the raid on her premises.

However, Doyle claimed it was her mother Avril Doyle who Gordon first produced the document to, which is contradictory to the evidence already given in the case by Gordon, his deputy Declan Buckley and the department inspector Louis Reardon, who were also present in the yard that day.

The case, which is being heard by Mr Justice Barton, enters its 20th day on Friday at 11am.

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