‘Real IRA man shot in clean-up operation’

Gardaí suspect the leaders of a terrorist alliance are behind a gun attack on a dissident as he dropped a child off at a creche in north Dublin. Parents looked on as a gunman shot Declan Smith in the head during rush hour on Holywell Avenue in Donaghmede.

The 32-year-old was shot by a lone gunman just metres from the Little Rainbow’s Creche at 9am. He was treated by paramedics before being taken to Beaumont Hospital, where he is in a critical condition.

Detectives will investigate if he was targeted by criminals, but suspect the shooting is part of a bloody “clean-up operation” of the Real IRA in Dublin.

This has already resulted in a number of shootings and punishment attacks, including a previous gun attack on Smith in January 2013. He was found with an injury to his leg in a field in Saggart, west Dublin.

The leadership of what is now being termed the New IRA is controlled by senior figures from the North, who were behind the murder of prison officer David Black in October 2012.

The new alliance unites branches of the Real IRA on both sides of the border, the Derry-based Republican Action Against Drugs and a number of prominent Provisionals. Gardaí have had a large number of successes including rocket and bomb-making seizures as well as multiple arrests against the alliance. Smith, from Belfast, has been living in north Dublin for several years.

He was reported to be vying for leadership of the Dublin Real IRA following the murder of its leader, and his friend, Alan Ryan in September 2012 in Clongriffin, north Dublin.

Ryan’s murder at the hands of crime bosses left a power vacuum between the various Dublin branches of the Real IRA — which often operated as isolated cells. One cell, based around the Bluebell-Inchicore area of the south-inner-city, tried to assume leadership.

One member of that cell was shot by other factions of the Real IRA in May 2013, while another is in custody. A senior Real IRA figure from the North was arrested over the 2013 shooting of Smith, but he was released without charge.

Smith wasn’t the first man associated with Ryan to have been shot as part of the Northern-ordered clean-up operation. The November before a 33-year-old was kneecapped and dumped in Ballyfermot, west Dublin.

Gardaí believe Ryan’s murder was orchestrated by two Dublin crime bosses, who refused to be extorted for cash by his branch.