A former driver for Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams and other senior party figures was yesterday exposed as an agent and informer working for the British security services. Roy McShane, a familiar figure with the Sinn Féin political and security entourages that travelled to Stormont, was last night said to be in "protective police custody" after he was revealed to be a British agent, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
It is understood he was working for MI5, which now has the lead role in Northern Ireland for gathering intelligence on paramilitaries. Mr McShane, a 59-year-old former IRA member, and a physically slight figure, was regularly seen around Sinn Féin leaders in west Belfast and at Stormont, often in the company of the former Sinn Féin administrative head at Stormont, Denis Donaldson.
Donaldson was shot dead in mysterious circumstances in west Donegal five months after he too was outed as a spy.
Mr McShane was part of a pool of drivers for senior republican leaders from the time of the IRA's first ceasefire in 1994. He drove for Mr Adams and other senior Sinn Féin political negotiators at about the sensitive times of the Belfast Agreement and when the IRA was considering or planning to decommission.
He would also have been a driver about the time that Sinn Féin discovered a bugging device in Mr Adams's car - an electronic surveillance that was authorised by the then northern secretary Mo Mowlam.
According to Sinn Féin, Mr McShane admitted to his family on Thursday that he was an agent. It is believed he left his home in west Belfast yesterday.
Sinn Féin Assembly member Alex Maskey said he and other senior republicans were disappointed but not terribly surprised by the news. He said Mr McShane was under no threat from republicans, but would have to make his "own peace" with his family. "He's safe; let's face it the war is over, I see him under no threat at all from republicans," he said.
While Sinn Féin downplayed the revelation, it will cause embarrassment for the party. It comes in the wake of the exposure of Donaldson and Freddie Scappaticci as spies and at a time when the Eames-Bradley commission is understood to have been given evidence of high levels of British infiltration of Sinn Féin and the IRA during the Troubles.