Informant revelations - Procedures not fit for purpose

Coming hard on the heels of the deeply damaging public row between the Garda Ombudsman and gardaí over the handling of undercover informants, today’s front-page revelations again focus on a dysfunctional system urgently in need of reform.

So harmful were the implications of the recent dispute that Justice Minister Alan Shatter had to knock heads together when the Ombudsman accused gardaí of delaying its four-year investigation into the case of convicted drug dealer Kieran Boylan, against whom charges of possessing heroin and cocaine were inexplicably dropped. The delay allegation was strongly rejected by Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan.

At the heart of this controversy, the burning question is whether or not gardaí had colluded with the infamous drug dealer. While all the facts of the Boylan case have yet to come to light, it is beyond dispute that the failures of a system which should be seen to operate to a high standard continues to cause serious concern.

As it happens, the central figure in our exposé of yet another botched undercover operation was an informant who had been passing information to the force. His identity is known to the Irish Examiner but withheld so as to protect him against reprisal by criminals. The nub of the issue is that Mr A was inadvertently revealed asan informant after being arrested with an armed gang following a robbery at a post office.

Astonishingly, when the book of evidence was presented, it named him as a garda informant, information which was also supplied to other members of the gang. How this happened has yet to be made clear. In the murky world of informants, it is unclear whether this explosive information emanated from a garda source or if it came from the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. Strangely, an internal dispute within the force over his status meant he received no protection.

The scenario raises more questions than answers about the operation of the system. Why were the charges against the robbers effectively dropped? That arose when the state entered a nolle prosequi, presumably because the full facts would have come out in a trial, effectively exposing the informant’s relationship with the gardaí and further embarrassing the force.

As a direct result of a life-threatening cock-up, theinformant has been forced to flee the country and is currently hiding somewhere in Europe. Ironically, despite denying claims that his life was endangered, the State has settled the case, paying him a six-figure sum last month by way of compensation.

Following its investigation of complaints against some gardaí of the Donegal division, the Morris Tribunal triggered initiatives towards higher standards of conduct in the management and use of the informant system. However, as criticism voiced by the Garda Ombudsman makes clear, far-reaching changes remain to be put into effect, including independent access to the Pulse computer system as well as “intrusive and independent” oversight of the Garda system for handling informants.

In the aftermath of the fiasco surrounding the Boylan case, today’s extraordinary revelations are, if anything, even more damning because they show in graphic terms that procedures for handling informants are not fit for purpose. Effectively, rather than being strengthened, the moral authority of the Garda Síochána is undermined.