Gardaí wouldn't police town in the rain, Morris Tribunal told

Gardaí took a weather permitting approach to policing in a Donegal town, it was claimed today.

Paddy Lynch, a car park attendant at a popular bar in Raphoe, told the Morris Tribunal he only saw local officers out on the street at night if it was dry.

Even though there could have been 400 cars and buses bringing revellers to Frankie’s nightclub, Mr Lynch said gardai did nothing to direct traffic.

He said gardaí only took to the streets at night in the months after the unsolved death of local cattle dealer Richie Barron in October 1996.

“The only time you seen the guards was a dry night – a wet night I’d be there myself,” he said.

“A wet night, a cold night, if it was snowing or anything like that they (gardaí) weren’t to be seen.”

Mr Lynch, from Ballybofey, told the inquiry he spent every Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights in the late 1990s manning the car park at Frankie’s club for hundreds of revellers.

The tribunal is investigating allegations gardai in Raphoe orchestrated a long-running period of harassment at Frankie’s by carrying out raids throughout 1997.

Mr Lynch said gardaí took a much greater interest in the club after Frank McBrearty Junior, whose father Frank owned the nightclub, was wrongly accused of murdering Mr Barron, but the tribunal has ruled he died in an unsolved hit-and-run.

Mr Lynch said he seldom saw gardaí around the town at night before Mr Barron’s death.

And he said relations with gardaí became more difficult when shamed ex-detective John White, who was sacked for corruption, was put in charge in Raphoe.

“The only difficulty I had was when Sergeant White came into the town,” he said.

Mr Lynch said gardaí left him to direct traffic in and out of the car park beside Frankie’s. He said there could have been several hundred extra vehicles in the town.

“I had to manage it. Someone had to do it because there were no guards about to do it,” he said.

Mr Lynch said after the Barron death two or three car loads of gardai would sit outside Frankie’s on weekend nights.

Mr Lynch said gardaí set up late night checkpoints stopping cars leaving Frankie’s and that people in Raphoe felt gardaí were harassing them.

“After the death of Richie Barron you’d just dread going to Raphoe with the harassment you were getting,” he said.