Officer 'told of British link' to 1974 bombing

A retired Army bomb disposal expert has said he received intelligence just months after the 1974 Monaghan and Dublin bombings suggesting an explosives expert in the British army had armed the device in Monaghan.

Comdt Patrick Trears, now retired, told a hearing of the Oireachtas Committee on Justice that the same British officer had tried to bribe him in 1974 to supply information on bombs to the British security forces.

Comdt Trears said a garda associate introduced him to the man. The garda brought the British soldier to Comdt Trears's Dublin home in August 1974. He said it was at this meeting that the British officer put it to him that he, Comdt Trears, could benefit financially if he passed information to the British.

The British soldier worked as a bomb-disposal expert in the North at the time, but his position also involved the gathering of intelligence on bombs. Comdt Trears said he was particularly interested in receiving information which might help him and his colleagues trace the movement of explosives across the Border.

The offer of a bribe was put in an "informal way, that there'd be out of pocket expenses" and that "I might make a few bob". However, he never heard from the man again. Some months after the meeting he received information that the same British soldier had armed the device in Monaghan.

The soldier was not named at the hearing yesterday. Mr Trears conceded this intelligence was "hearsay" as opposed to "concrete evidence". However, he added the professional manner in which the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan were executed meant the loyalist paramilitaries suspected of being responsible could not have operated without professional assistance.

"I couldn't have done a better job myself," he said of the bombs. The level of expertise at the time among loyalist terrorists on explosives was to "light a fuse and run," he said.

During Comdt Trears's evidence the chairman of the committee, Mr Sean Ardagh TD, took proceedings into private session. When the committee members returned, Mr Ardagh reminded Comdt Trears that it was outside the remit of the committee to apportion blame for, or reinvestigate, the bombings.

The committee will decide if a public tribunal of inquiry into the bombings, and allegations of collusion, is warranted. It will report back to the Government next month. Some 33 people, including a pregnant woman, were killed in the attacks.

The bombings represent the biggest unsolved murder case in the history of the State.

Earlier yesterday, a retired senior garda who was in charge of the investigation into the Monaghan bombing said his officers compiled a report on the atrocity, sent it to Dublin in the summer of 1974, and that the operation then switched to Dublin.

Mr John Paul McMahon, who was chief superintendent in the Cavan/Monaghan division at the time, said he never saw the Garda file into the bombings.

Mr McMahon was a former head of both the Garda Technical Bureau and the Special Branch. He also served as an assistant commissioner and a deputy commissioner, the second most senior rank in the force.

He said all leads into the bombings were investigated but that the investigation came up against a "brick wall" because most of the suspects were not living in the Republic. While gardaí could request to go to Northern Ireland to interview suspects, it was clear from senior security officials there that gardaí were not welcome.

"We were aware of sensitivities ... that was the nature of the restriction as far as the investigation was concerned," he said.