Informers 'rife in Sinn Féin, IRA'

A former Dundalk-based detective sergeant has claimed informers were rife within Sinn Féin and the “very highest echelons" of the IRA during the 1970s and 1980s.

Owen Corrigan told the Smithwick Tribual this morning that some senior IRA members and a quarter of all Sinn Féin members sold information to the British army and the RUC.

"They congregated at night in Dundalk at night and travelled up to Northern Ireland the following day," he said.  He said they were providing information on each other and had “no loyalty”.

He said the Northern security services were under such pressure for information about subversives that they paid huge sums of money for “useless information” and “tittle tattle”.

Mr Corrigan also said the self-described British agent Kevin Fulton - who claimed to have worked undercover in the IRA - was also one of those seeking payments.

Mr Corrigan told Judge Peter Smithwick that after the Omagh bomb detonated, Mr Fulton had approached his RUC handlers seeking payment for the information he had given them.

In response to questions from Justin Dillon SC for the tribunal Mr Corrigan acknowledged he himself had a “power base” in Garda headquarters where he had the confidence of former commissioner and assistant commissioners Joe Ainsworth; Eugene Crowley; and Pat Byrne.

Mr Corrigan said that given the situation in regard to intelligence gathering in the North, these men were “grateful” for the quality information he was providing them. It was, he said, “the most difficult and troubled years of our history” and his line of contact to headquarters was necessary because of the urgency of the situation.

The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that members of  the Garda colluded with the IRA in the 1989 killing of two senior RUC officers. Chief supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan were shot to death in an ambush in south Armagh minutes after leaving a meeting in Dundalk Garda station.

The tribunal has adjourned until this afternoon after problems developed with microphones.