DERRY GAA has said a series of emails sent by the father of Nicola Gallagher relating to allegations of domestic abuse involving former county senior football manager Rory Gallagher were sent to a defunct address.
The county board said an internal audit took place into why five emails sent by Gerry Rooney were not picked up.
The probe began after Derry GAA said it was unaware of the allegations made by Ms Gallagher in a social media post earlier this month, despite claims by her father that he had advised the county board of the allegations via email last year.
The Sunday Independent reported Mr Rooney sent five emails between May and July 2022, containing claims regarding Mr Gallagher, who resigned as Derry manager last week.
Derry GAA initially said it had “no record of receiving any such email” and suggested they may have been sent to a “defunct administrator address”.
They said they have since made contact with Mr Rooney in connection to the emails.
Following the audit, a Derry GAA spokesperson told the Sunday Independent Mr Rooney’s emails had been sent to an address that had been deactivated just weeks before the first email was sent.
However, the address had remained on the Derry GAA website, and was only removed within the past week.
They said the addresses’ inbox was last accessed in April 2021, and deactivated in February 2022.
“Following a full examination of the ‘administrator.derry@gaa.ie’ email address by the GAA at central level, Derry GAA was advised on completion of that audit to remove the email address from its website as it is no longer in use,” the spokesperson said.
“The current website was built in late 2019 and the contact page was created on January 13 2020.
“It contained the administrator.derry@gaa.ie email. It was edited once, on Wednesday past, to remove the email address at the request of central GAA following their audit.”
Following the claims made by his estranged wife, Mr Gallagher said the had been “investigated and dealt with by the relevant authorities”.
It was confirmed earlier this month that the Public Prosecution Service received two files from the PSNI in relation to Mr Gallagher last year, but it was determined there was not enough evidence for any case to proceed.
