A claim that gardai ignored important evidence in the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder case will now be examined.

Maurice Sweeney, 62, a Loughrea travel agent, said that he told gardai that a man fitting Marie Farrell’s original description had booked flights to France the day after du Plantier’s murder. Although Sweeney passed this information to gardai several times, he says it was ignored.

Earlier this month Farrell withdrew a statement that placed Ian Bailey close to the crime scene on the night of the murder. She now claims that she was pressed by police into identifying the British journalist as the man she saw close to du Plantier’s home, a man she originally described as sallow and of medium height.

Police will now examine the travel agent’s claim that a man who matched Farrell’s description came into his Loughrea premises the day after the murder and booked a flight to France from Dublin for the following day. Sweeney said a similar looking man was pictured in an Evening Herald article in 1997 and was alleged to have attacked du Plantier some months before she was killed in west Cork in December 1996.

The travel agent said that he felt “like a voice crying in the wilderness” as he attempted to make gardai take notice of his claims. Sweeney contacted gardai on three or more occasions to say he had information about a possible suspect in the case, but said detectives told him to “go home” and refused to take a statement.

After approaching police in Kilkenny, Galway and Cork, he contacted Noel Treacy, his local TD, now a minister of state at the Department of Foreign Affairs. A spokesman for the minister said he remembered the call but not the details of the allegations.

The travel agent also wrote a letter last year to Michael McDowell, the justice minister, who replied that it was an internal matter for the gardai.

Sweeney contacted the French embassy as well but said he was told by a diplomat that gardai “knew” the culprit and that Sweeney’s story was irrelevant.

“It’s going on for the last nine years,” Sweeney said. “With the gardai I didn’t have a look in. I was told by them ‘look, go home’. I wrote to McDowell and he told me it was an operational matter for the gardai and that was that.

“The picture in the Evening Herald was very much like the man who came into my shop. Du Plantier was in charge of an art programme on French television. This man was trying to promote his paintings and approached her for a slot and she refused. He allegedly assaulted her.”

Last week Superintendent Kevin Donohue of the garda press office said that the claims would be investigated by a team appointed by Noel Conroy, the garda commissioner.

“You can take it that Assistant Commissioner Ray McAndrew’s investigation will deal with any matters relevant to the investigation and if there’s something in that (claim) that needs to examined or re-examined it will be included,” he said.

“It may well have been looked at in the investigation at the time without the person having to be gone back to. There are different ways of being able to progress a particular line of inquiry and close it satisfactorily if it was of no relevance.”

Farrell’s decision to retract her statement about Bailey prompted the internal garda investigation. The Schull woman convincingly testified in a recent libel trial that she had seen Bailey on the night of the murder near du Plantier’s house. She also described at length how the journalist had threatened her, saying she should recant her statement.

Two days after the murder Farrell phoned gardai, using her own name, and reported seeing a “sallow” man of about 5ft 8in acting strangely in the days before the killing. She later called another station using a pseudonym alleging she saw the same man close to the scene on the night of the murder.

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