State honours for garda's funeral

The Garda detective accidentally shot during an operation to foil a bank robbery in Co Laois on Friday will be buried with State honours tomorrow.

The Garda Commissioner, Mr Patrick Byrne, said on Saturday he believed all shots fired during the incident came from Garda weapons.

Det Sgt John Eiffe will be laid to rest in his native Ratoath, Co Meath, where he lived with his wife and four children.

His body will be removed from a funeral home in Dunshaughlin tonight, arriving at Ratoath church at 7 p.m.

The burial will take place after 11 a.m. Mass tomorrow.

A second officer who was slightly injured was released from hospital on Saturday.

As an internal Garda inquiry into the incident gets under way, led by Assistant Commissioner Mr Dick Kelly, Fine Gael last night urged that the completed report be made public.

The party's spokesman on justice, Mr Alan Shatter, said it would be wrong "for anyone to jump to conclusions about the tragic circumstances" of Det Sgt Eiffe's death, but he hoped the report would address operational issues arising from the incident.

A spokesman for the Minister for Justice said it was Mr O'Donoghue's wish that the report would be as "exhaustive as possible, completed in as short a time-frame as possible, and for publication".

Det Sgt Eiffe was a member of the National Surveillance Unit. He was formerly attached to the Emergency Response Unit and is believed to have been part of the operation which foiled a "Real IRA" raid on a security van at Ashford, Co Wicklow, in 1998.

He was well-known in Ratoath, where he lived with his wife Lorraine and children Andrew (15), Alison (12), Michelle (10) and Rachel (2).

He was a member of the Meath minor football team for three seasons in the late 1970s.

A relative of the dead man, Mr Dan Eiffe, is a former Catholic priest who has been active with relief agencies in Sudan.

Det Sgt Eiffe is also survived by his mother Alice, his brother Brian - who has returned from Australia for the funeral - and his sisters Maeve and Catherine.