Heated exchanges over collusion report

There were heated exchanges at the Smithwick Tribunal today as former Garda commissioner Pat Byrne said he stood over an investigation into Garda collusion which failed to interview politicians who claimed to have useful information.

Mr Byrne acknowledged a report he commissioned in 2000, which inquired into allegations of Garda-IRA collusion in some 12 murders, had not interviewed then Fine Gael justice spokesman Jim Higgins and DUP MP Jeffrey Donaldson.

This was despite Mr Higgins telling the Dáil he personally knew the names of two gardaí who had colluded with the IRA and Mr Donaldson naming a former garda from Dundalk, under House of Commons privilege, as an IRA mole.

Mr Byrne told the tribunal he accepted the report’s author Det Chief Supt Sean Camon did not interview the politicians because he already knew what they had to say. “His report was acceptable in all aspects. It was my understanding he knew the information they had," he said.

The Camon report had been commissioned by Mr Byrne on the instructions of the government, after allegations of Garda-IRA collusion in a book by author and journalist Toby Harnden, and an Irish Times article by journalist Kevin Meyers, as well as the Dáil questions by opposition politicians.

The Camon report interviewed the journalists but not the politicians and ultimately concluded that there was no evidence to support allegations of collusion among the gardaí in Dundalk.

However in a lengthy and at times terse cross-examination counsel for the tribunal Justin Dillon SC repeatedly asked Mr Byrne how Mr Camon could have concluded he knew what the politicians had to say, without actually speaking to them.

He asked Mr Byrne if he approved of the report’s methodology in not talking to those who had claimed to have useful information. He said the Camon report interviewed people who said they had no evidence, but failed to interview those who claimed to have information.

Mr Byrne repeated he accepted Mr Camon’s approach.

He told the tribunal: “We dealt with intelligence, we dealt with facts. Politicians often say things to other politicians for different reasons."

Mr Byrne also rejected an assertion from Mr Dillon that an original garda inquiry carried out after the killing of two RUC officers in 1989, was an inquiry into Garda collusion with the IRA. The inquiry carried out by then assistant commissioner Ned O’Dea had been “to establish the facts”, he said.

“Mr O’Dea went to Dundalk on a fact-finding mission, what were the arrangements [for the visit of the two RUC officers to Dundalk Garda station] and who knew what? I would expect the commissioner would have wanted very quick answers."

Mr Dillon said concern about collusion among the gardaí in Dundalk pre-dated the killings of the two RUC officers and was well known. He said it continued "for a decade or two" and he referred to a front page newspaper report in the Irish Press published the day after the murders, which spoke of allegations of collusion being re-awakened.

"What collusion?” asked Mr Byrne. "There was one media. If that is what you are calling the public arena,  yes it was in the public arena."

Mr Dillon put it to the witness that “there was a very considerable public dimension to the allegation of collusion”.

Mr Byrne replied: “There was a headline in a newspaper”.

When Mr Dillon put it to Mr Byrne that the Camon report 11 years later was the former commissioner’s “own opportunity” to investigate allegations of collusion, Mr Byrne replied: "I did not look upon it as an opportunity to deal with collusion….I did not look on it as an opportunity. It was a look at what needed to be done.”

Mr Dillon pointed out Mr Byrne had referred to allegations of collusion in his covering synopsis of the Camon report, pointing out that no evidence of collusion was uncovered. He also said Mr Byrne had singled out this finding in the O’Dea report.

“You isolate the O’Dea report and the only thing you focus on is there is no leak," said Mr Dillon.

“Am I to ignore it?” asked Mr Byrne.