Morris: McGlinchey neighbour 'bought her bullets'

A former neighbour of key Morris garda corruption tribunal witness Adrienne McGlinchey recalled today how he obtained bullets, cartridges and a bag of fertiliser for her.

Bernard Logue, who lived in a flat at Buncrana, Co Donegal, on the floor above Ms McClinchey also reported that he had had made “Christmas tree-holders” from metal piping at her request and demonstrated the use of a hired motorised angle-grinder.

The grinder was used to annoy, through its noise late at night, the garda boyfriend of a woman living in another of the flats.

Mr Logue said Adrienne told him she wanted the ammunition for her own boyfriend’s clay-pigeon shooting hobby and the fertiliser for her mother.

Mr Logue, who at the time was living with Ciara McLaughlin, who gave evidence to an earlier hearing of the inquiry, also told of a detective informing him there were “suspicions of other things going on” at the flat where Ms McGlinchey lived with her friend Yvonne Devine.

But he had not personally believed Ms McGlinchey was involved in terrorism, rather she had been “making a fool out of the gardai, or whatever”.

However, he once saw a coffee grinder that appeared to have been used to grind down fertiliser, and he had also shown Ms McGlinchey how to “file down the top of a bullet”.

Echoing the evidence of Ms McLaughlin, he told the tribunal of one occasion when Ms Devine had come into the couple’s bedroom and asked to be hidden from two guards who were looking for her.

The tribunal, which today completed its eleventh week, is being chaired by former High Court President Mr Justice Frederick Morris.

It was established by a special order of the Dail to look into a series of claims about the police, and the current phase of the process is examining allegations that two currently-suspended officers, Superintendent Kevin Lennon and Detective Garda Noel McMahon, together with Ms McGlinchey, prepared explosives that were later planted and then “found” in bogus garda strikes against terrorism.

Superintendent Lennon and Detective McMahon rejected the accusations and, in evidence to the inquiry, Ms McGlinchey denied allegations that she had ever been in the IRA or relayed information about that organisation to the gardai.

Earlier today, former detective Des Walsh provided the tribunal with more details of the lie he agreed to tell an internal garda investigation.

Mr Walsh, giving evidence to the probe for his fourth and final day, spoke of the time Superintendent Lennon requested him to “take responsibility” for a non-existent file relating to the find of explosives and other terrorist-linked material at a flat in Buncrana, Co Donegal, a decade ago.

The items were all discovered at the home of Adrienne McGlinchey.

Mr Walsh said he was approached by Superintendent Lennon following his 1994 retirement from the force in connection with the file-that-never-was.

The superintendent, whom he had known for many years, asked him to tell internal investigators that he had taken the file and later destroyed it, while, in reality, it never existed.

Former Detective Sergeant Walsh – who revealed his action on the file for the first time at a tribunal hearing earlier this week – said: “He asked me to do that, and I agreed. I did not think of the wider implications, and regret doing it now.”

He added: “Kevin Lennon told me he was facing disciplinary action over the affair and requested a favour.”

The tribunal, which is expected to take as long as two years to complete its full brief, is presently Dublin-based, but will move to Donegal for a period next month.