'IRA informant' offered witness cash to back up story

Alleged IRA informant Adrienne McGlinchey offered a Morris Tribunal witness a cut of a “million pounds pay-out” if he backed up her story over garda involvement in the mixing of explosives at a shed owned by her mother, it emerged today.

The tribunal heard details of the inducement made to Pearse Devine, a fellow witness at the garda corruption inquiry, whose sister Yvonne was once a close friend of Ms McGlinchey and shared a flat with her in Buncrana, Co Donegal.

Mr Devine told the inquiry Adrienne McGlinchey asked him two years ago to corroborate a story that her Dublin solicitor was finding difficulty in believing by telling the lawyer that he had seen two named gardai near a Co Donegal garden shed owned by her mother.

She also mentioned that she was anticipating a “million pounds” compensation pay-out relating to an allegation of harassment by the state and said she would see Mr Devine “all right” if he went to her solicitor, as well as paying his expenses for going to Dublin,

Mr Devine recalled: “She told me it was my chance to get my own back on the gardai over a hoax telephone call.”

He explained that the call had referred to the possibility that a member of his family had aided a successful break-out from London’s Brixton jail by his uncle, prominent IRA man Pearse McCauley by sending him a hollowed-out shoe that had contained a gun.

But, added Mr Devine, he told Ms McGlinchey: “I’m a lover, not a fighter,” and rejected the offer.

“She was trying to provoke anger in me to get me to go along with her offer.”

Mr Devine also denied claims by Adrienne McGlinchey that he once supplied her with two walkie-talkie radio sets.

But he agreed that, when younger, his hobby was Citizens’ Band radio, and he had owned some equipment in connection with that.

He also refuted suggestions made by Ms McGlinchey that she had protected him after he got “drawn into something he did not want to get drawn into”.

“It’s all fictional as far as I am concerned,” Mr Devine declared.

The tribunal, chaired by former High Court President Mr Justice Frederick Morris, was established by the Dail two years ago to investigate allegations of improper activity by gardai in Co Donegal in the 1990s.

The current module of the inquiry is looking into claims that Ms McGlinchey, together with Detective Garda Noel McMahon and currently suspended Superintendent Kevin Lennon, prepared explosives that were planted in locations to subsequently found in bogus garda strikes against terrorism.

Both officers have denied the allegations, and Ms McGlinchey has said she was never in the IRA or passed information about that organisation to the gardai.