Detectives doubted 'informer's' word, Morris told

Two former detectives today told the Morris Tribunal into Garda corruption of their doubts over the veracity of information relayed to the force in Co Donegal by alleged IRA insider Adrienne McGlinchey during the 1990s.

Ex-Detective Sergeant Des Walsh said he had once gone to a senior officer to urge caution on the way the gardai dealt with Ms McGlinchey, a key witness at the on-going inquiry into alleged improper activities.

But he was told by Superintendent John O’Connor: “Don’t concern yourself - everything is above board.”

And a detective colleague of Mr Walsh’s, Tom Sreenan, also a retired detective sergeant, told the tribunal he had dismissed information from Ms McGlinchey as “pure rubbish”.

Mr Walsh was involved in anti-subversive operations in Co Donegal when the gardai made what he called “the largest find of explosives in the country”.

He recalled that the discovery – on Co Donegal’s White Strand in 1993 – had included “two-and-a-half tons of explosives, 105 Kalashnikov rifles, two large guns for taking down helicopters, Semtex and between 50,000 and 70,000 rounds of ammunition”.

He added: “That was the result of good police work. We saw suspicious activity, and followed it up.”

Mr Walsh said he had been stationed in Buncrana when Ms McGlinchey and her friend Yvonne

Devine moved there, and he had been told that Adrienne passed useful information to the gardai when she was based in Letterkenny.

But he had later revised his opinion of Ms McGlinchey and become certain that “she was not a member of the IRA,” even though she had been seen near a house used by the terrorist group at that time.

He had also said there had been growing concern about whether the information she was passing on was “genuine or otherwise”.

Mr Walsh said: “It was a most unusual situation that there was disgruntlement about an informant. All I can say is that she (Ms McGlinchey) had an effect on the detective branch.

“There was a hunch that things were not quite right. If Ms McGlinchey was an IRA informant, she was behaving in a very unusual way. There was concern that she was passing herself off as something she was not.

“I would never have listed her as a member of the IRA, and not an active supporter, a sympathiser, maybe.”

Pressed about how he had been informed about the official “hands-off” policy relating to Ms McGlinchy – which effectively blocked her being charged – Mr Walsh said Superintendent O’Connor had felt she was a good informant and should only be handled by certain officers.

“He was annoyed and perturbed that detectives were not doing what they were told, and made it clear that certain members were not to interfere with what she was doing. It was a bizarre situation.”

Mr Walsh also highlighted his dissatisfaction at the way a find of explosives and materials at the Buncrana flat occupied by Ms McGlinchey and Ms Devine had been handled by the gardai.

He said the investigation had led to the scene of the incident being “flawed” before he and other officers arrived there.

Mr Sreenan – concluding three-days of evidence at the tribunal headed by former High Court President Mr Justice Frederick Morris – said there were people within the detective division of the Donegal gardai at the time in question who believed that what they were being told by Ms McGlinchey.

But he also reported how he and some other officers had been “suspicious about the whole operation and what was going on and the general set-up”.

Mr Sreenan said the suspicions were based in part on the official “lay off” policy during that period that prevented Ms McGlinchey and her flatmate then-friend Yvonne Devine being charged, despite being found in possession of incriminating terrorist-linked materials, such as bullets and metal tubing.

“We were led to believe that these two ladies were supplying useful information, while everything on the ground would suggest that anything they had - or anything that anybody came across with – was pure rubbish.

“Nothing appeared to me, or any of my colleagues, to be incriminating. And at end of the day, I did not see anything incriminating anywhere.”

When asked by lawyer Paul Murphy – representing Detective Garda Noel McMahon, one of the central figures in the corruption probe – whether he was saying that the information provided by Ms McGlinchey had been bogus, and made up in order to portray herself as “a big player,” Mr Sreenan replied: “That would appear to be correct.”

He raised the question of Ms McGlinchey’s personal safety, had she been relaying genuine information about the IRA, declaring that the organisation carried out its own “court” investigations of such cases – and the penalty for guilt was “execution”.

Today marked the start of the eleventh week of the tribunal’s investigation.

The current, Dublin-based dimension of the inquiry is looking into allegations that Garda Superintendent Kevin Lennon and Detective McMahon, together with Ms McGlinchey, prepared explosives in Buncrana, Co Donegal, that were later planted and then found in fake garda strikes against IRA terrorism.

Superintendent Lennon and Detective McMahon, both currently suspended from duty, have denied the allegations, and in the course of her evidence to the tribunal, Ms McGlinchey repeatedly rejected suggestions that she had ever been in the IRA or passed information about that organisation to gardai.

The inquiry was established by the Dail to examine a number of allegations against the Gardai in Donegal during the last decade, and is expected to take up to two years to complete its work.