'No evidence' IRA tapped phone lines

No evidence could be found to support allegations that the IRA tapped private telephone lines between the Garda and the RUC, a Garda criminal investigation found.

Former Det Insp Christopher Kelly told the Smithwick Tribunal today he was asked by then assistant commissioner Joseph Egan in June 2005 to carry out a criminal investigation into allegations in Phoenix magazine that lines were tapped in Dundalk telephone exchange.

The magazine claimed the IRA had placed a recorder lines in the exchange, gaining valuable information that enabled them carry out a number of killings over a three year period from 1987.

However, Mr Kelly said his investigation revealed although the method of interception described by Phoenix magazine was "technically feasible" it was "highly unlikely if not impossible". He said the method described was "cumbersome" and would have been prone to discovery, damage by flooding and that evidence of the intercept would still have been visible years later.

But Mr Kelly said his investigation did unearth comments from a former telephone engineer to the effect that lines on a telephone pole may have been tapped. He also interviewed a former telecoms inspector William Prendergast who claimed to remember “vague” details of an investigation into tapping.

The tribunal also heard excerpts from an article in the Cork Examiner on March 23rd, 1988, in which Northern journalist and security expert Jim McDowell reported the IRA had tapped phones through the use of a device mounted on a telephone pole.

However, Mr Kelly said he could not find any evidence to say the investigation remembered by Mr Prendergast and the discovery of interference with a telegraph pole were connected. “There was no evidence” he said.

The Smithwick Tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that members of the gardaí in Dundalk or other employees of the State colluded with the IRA in the murder of two RUC officers. Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan were killed in an IRA ambush shortly after leaving Dundalk Garda Station on March 20th, 1989.