British not to be pressed for spy ring probe

THE Government will not press the British Government for an inquiry into spy rings and the so-called Stormontgate affair, the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said last night.

Mr Ahern, speaking after meeting Northern Secretary Peter Hain in Belfast, said that an inquiry would be unlikely to get to the truth and would delay the political process. “It would take years and be used by people as an excuse to do nothing,” he told RTÉ.

However, Mr Ahern said the he had “exhorted” Mr Hain to make as much information as possible available about the existence of a so-called republican spy ring in Stormont in 2002 and the revelation that a senior republican charged for involvement with the spy ring was a British agent for two decades.