Garda failed to tell station of 'bomb factory' find

A Garda called to a suspected bomb factory find today admitted neither securing the scene or passing on the information to his local station chiefs.

The admission was made to the Morris Tribunal into garda corruption in Co Donegal, which earlier heard how the landlord of a flat in Buncrana made the find when called to his premises to check reports of a plumbing leak.

The landlord, publican John Mackey said he was “amazed” at what he found when he looked around the flat that was shared at the time – in 1994 – by key tribunal witness Adrienne McGlinchey and her then teenage friend Yvonne Devine.

He reported spotting a steel object with fins and bags of fertiliser granules that could be used to make bombs, and added: “I didn’t know what to think.”

After making the discovery, Mr Mackey called in Garda Tom Rattigan, who, he said, commented: “We have got a bomb factory here.”

He subsequently made up his mind to ask the women to leave the flat because of what he had seen. Later though, he was approached by a man in a car – whom he believed to be a detective – who put it to him the he might “let the girls stay and we might catch a bigger fish”.

Garda Rattigan said he did not recall making the remark about a bomb factory, but itemised what he found after being called in by Mr Mackey.

He saw the metal object, which later disappeared, as well as the bags of fertiliser in a bathroom of the flat.

Later, after leaving the scene of the flat unguarded, he reported on the incident – using a telephone kiosk directly across the road from the local garda station – not to the station, but to Detective Garda Noel McMahon, a central figure in the corruption probe – even though he was off-duty and at his home at the time.

Pressed on that point by Paul McDermott, counsel for the tribunal, Garda Rattigan explained: “He was a member of my unit, I had worked with him before and he was a very good friend of mine. I also wanted him to get some of the credit for the find.

“He said he would look after it and take care of it from there. I assumed he would alert the relevant people, higher authorities.”

Asked what action he would take in the event of finding a dead body, Garda Rattigan replied: “I would inform the station.”

Following the discovery in the women’s flat – the only arms find he had ever been involved in, and one he had regarded as fairly significant, exciting and not a hoax – he had not returned to the scene, and said he could not remember whether Detective McMahon had afterwards bought him a pint for letting him know of the development.

He had only learned recently that the metal object he had seen at the flat had disappeared, and could offer no explanation for that.

Asked by tribunal chairman Mr Justice Frederick Morris whether his actions had in any way fallen short of correct standard, the guard said that “on hindsight” he should have preserved the scene of the find and told his station about it.

The only reason he had contacted Detective Garda McMahon was because of their friendship, he stressed to the judge – but they had not subsequently discussed the find.

An official statement relayed to Garda HQ in Dublin reporting that the materials had been discovered as a result of confidential information was not accurate, he added.

Garda Rattigan also said that ahead of the find of terrorist materials in their home he had heard that the two women had previously been arrested because “they were sympathetic towards the IRA,” although he had not personally seen any evidence of that.

He had also heard nothing of allegations that Ms McGlinchey had been involved in mixing explosives, but added: “There were plenty of IRA sympathisers about Buncrana at that time.”

Adrienne McGlinchey’s sister Karen later told the inquiry of a meeting she had in the study of her home in Letterkenny in 1999 with Detective McMahon, that ended with him “turning vicious,” and an assault complaint.

Noel McMahon had told her that his wife Sheenagh – who also has given evidence to the inquiry – was “doing a lot of talking and taking stuff – explosives and guns” from their house.

During the course of their conversation he said he would “go to jail before Adrienne,” and pushed her against a wall, said Karen McGlinchey, adding: “I could smell the drink on his breath.”

“I was crying and so upset, and later the same day Noel McMahon rang me, asking me to say nothing and saying that if everybody stayed quiet it would be all right.”

During the same meeting, Detective Garda McMahon “threatened my sister’s life,” Ms McGlinchey said.

She made an allegation of assault against Detective Garda McMahon some six months later.

Earlier, before concluding her evidence, Yvonne Devine was cross-examined about lapses in her memory.

Once a close friend of key witness Adrienne McGlinchey – who concluded a marathon 11 days of evidence last week – Ms Devine persistently maintained at earlier hearings that she could either not remember at all or had only hazy recollections of events in the early 1990s.

The incidents in question mainly involved occasions when Ms Devine, a nephew of prominent IRA man Pearse McCauley, then in her mid-teens and Ms McGlinchey were stopped by gardai and Adrienne McGlinchey was found to have terrorist-type equipment like bullets and walkie-talkie radios in her possession.

She was pressed today by Anthony Barr, another of the tribunal counsel, about her failure to recall many of those occasions, even though she had been able to tell the inquiry details of how she bought and fitted a padlock to a bedroom door in a flat she shared with Ms McGlinchey in Buncrana, Co Donegal, during the period concerned.

Ms Devine declared: “I was stopped so many times by guards around that time in my life that I blanked it out to move on.”

The tribunal’s current, Dublin-based phase is dealing with claims that Ms McGlinchey, an alleged one-time informer on IRA activities together with Detective Garda McMahon and currently suspended Garda Superintendent Kevin Lennon, prepared explosives that were later planted in locations that figured in bogus successful finds of terrorist hauls by the gardai.

Both men have denied the allegations.