Meath man attempts to have 40-year-old conviction quashed

Mr Conmey’s application, brought under Section 2 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1993, is part of his attempt to have his conviction declared a miscarriage of justice

In 1972, he and another man, Dick Donnelly, were convicted of the 19-year-old’s manslaughter. A year later, both men appealed and Donnelly’s conviction was overturned, but Martin Conmey served three years in prison for the offence.

A third man, Martin Kerrigan, was also suspected of having been involved in the crime, but he was abducted and killed a short time after the body of Ms Lynskey was discovered.

Lawyers for Martin Conmey today told the CCA of Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman presiding, sitting with Mr Justice Declan Budd and Mr Justice Eamon De Valera that their client “always” maintained his innocence.

Mr Hugh Hartnett SC, for Conmey, said there were “newly discovered facts” in his client’s case, including the existence of “earlier” contradictory statements from key witnesses and a previously unknown allegation of violence and “oppression” by gardaí against one of these.

Una Lynskey vanished while returned home from work on the evening of October 12, 1971. Her journey from the bus stop to her family home at Porterstown Lane in Meath, should have taken 15 minutes by foot but the young woman “never made it home”.

Her body was discovered in a ditch in a remote part of the Dublin Mountains two months later. A post mortem examination on the civil servant’s body failed to reveal exactly how she died. She had no broken bones and there were no signs she was strangled.

The State is opposing the application. Mr Brendan Grehan SC is representing the Director of Public Prosecutions.

The hearing is expected to “three, possibly four days”.