Bugging was Garda's best-kept secret, tribunal told

A former detective who confided in his superior about alleged illegal bugging of Garda stations was told it was the best-kept secret in the force, it was claimed today.

Ex-detective sergeant John White testified that he told Chief Superintendent Austin McNally privileged conversations between solicitors and clients were being covertly taped.

Chief Supt McNally, the highest ranking officer in Sligo at the time and now head of the Garda fraud squad, was part of the Carty team brought to Donegal to probe allegations of corruption.

Mr White said he told the senior officer about lawyers being spied on in Letterkenny Garda Station during the botched probe into cattle dealer Richie Barron’s death in 1996.

“He [Chief Supt McNally] says that’s the best-kept secret in the detective units in the gardaí. Then he just stopped it from there, he didn’t want to go into that anymore,” Mr White told the Morris Tribunal.

The former detective, sacked after being branded corrupt by the tribunal, insisted he wanted to tell Mr McNally about all the Garda wrongdoing going on in Donegal at the time.

Tribunal barrister Paul McDermott asked why he didn’t reveal his own role in the ill treatment of wrongly-arrested suspects Roisin McConnell and Katriona Brolly while he was baring his soul.

“I was embarrassed about it to a certain degree. The other thing is I didn’t really think it was on the same scale as the other wrongdoings. Maybe I’m wrong about that,” said Mr White.

He also claimed to have told Chief Supt McNally that an alleged statement of confession by Frank McBrearty Junior was false.

Mr White said his superior threw his hands in the air and replied: “Jesus Christ, don’t say that”.

Under questioning at the tribunal the ex-detective stood over his account which has been refuted by a number of former senior detective colleagues.

“I think it would be an unbelievable thing to invent all of this and put it into a meeting. It wouldn’t be a sensible thing to do,” he said.