Garda told 'not to help NI officials'

Former taoiseach Jack Lynch decreed that the Garda give no assistance to the Northern authorities investigating the Narrow Water bombing in which 18 British soldiers were killed, the Smithwick Tribunal has heard.

The Narrow Water bombing in August 1979 represented the single biggest loss of British army lives during the Troubles. Two bombs were detonated, allegedly from the southern side of Carlingford Lough, as a convoy of soldiers, mostly of the Parachute Regiment, passed Narrow Water Castle in Co Down.

Gardaí arrested two republican suspects on the south side of Carlingford Lough on the day of the atrocity, but later released them after charging them only with motoring offences.

A former deputy assistant chief constable of the RUC, referred to only as Witness 68, told the tribunal that the RUC were keen to get access to the two suspects should gardaí rearrest them.

Speaking via a videolink from Belfast, Witness 68 said he was present at a meeting in Dublin Castle in April 1980, one of a series of four meetings when the RUC made a number of requests for Garda co-operation in gaining access to the suspects.

Witness 68 recalled an assistant Garda commissioner named McLaughlin had told the RUC officers present, in the course of an acrimonious meeting, that the taoiseach, "from the outset of the inquiry, had decreed that the killings were a political crime and no assistance be given to the RUC”. He said Mr McLaughlin had told the RUC men there was no point in them coming back to Dublin again.

The taoiseach he referrred to was Jack Lynch, who had been succeeded by Charles Haughey by the date of the meeting in 1980.

Witness 68 said the two suspects were Brendan Burns and Joe Brennan of south Armagh, who he said had been linked through forensic evidence to bombmaking materials and to the firing point south of the Border.

He said if he had the forensic evidence which was available to the Garda at the time, he would have used it to ask the Northern Ireland director of public prosecutions to seek an extradition warrant for the two men.

However, the witness said co-operation from the Garda side was “nil” and akin “to pulling teeth from a hen”.

He said former Det Sgt Owen Corrigan of Dundalk station had been the senior investigating officer in the Republic. He alleged Mr Corrigan was known to be involved in criminality on both sides of the Border.

Witness 68 told Darren Lehane, counsel for Mr Corrigan, that the evidence available to the Garda should have supported a charge of handling explosives or conspiracy involving a bomb, and he asked why were the men were allowed to walk free.

He said Mr Corrigan had the opportunity to do "a great thing" for the Garda that day, but had not done so and the two suspects Brennan and Burns had later "killed at least a dozen people".

Burns was subsequently killed in 1988 when a bomb he was transporting exploded prematurely. Brennan was arrested in Northern Ireland in 1995 and later convicted on bomb-making charges relating to other incidents.

However, Michael Durack SC, for the Garda Síochána, put it to Witness 68 that Garda files on Brennan and Burns had been conveyed to the RUC having been sent to RUC headquarters.

He said the witness should have known that the suspects could not be arrested at the behest of a “foreign police force” and the RUC could not be allowed to interview them in the Garda jurisdiction.

Mr Durack said Witness 68 should have also known the RUC would not be allowed to attend such an interview. “It would have been illegal,” he said.