Judge called on to retract statement

Chairman of the Smithwick Tribunal Judge Peter Smithwick was this morning told he must retract an apparent assertion that a garda officer was “convicted of assisting the IRA” by signing blank passport forms.

Solicitor James McGuill for former garda Sergeant Finbarr Hickey said his client, although convicted in relation to the production of false passports, had not known the passports were destined for members of the IRA.

The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that members of the Garda based in Dundalk garda station or other employees of the State colluded with the IRA in the murder of two RUC officers in March 1989. Chief Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan were killed in an IRA ambush in south Armagh minutes after they left a meeting in Dundalk Garda station.

Mr McGuill said it had always been the State’s case in the prosecution of Mr Hickey over the passports affair, that Mr Hickey had not known who the passports were destined for, or who he was assisting.

Mr McQuill told the judge; “you must retract a finding that you appear to have made” and warned “you run the risk of being led into error".

He also said his client had always insisted he had not colluded with the IRA and on the day the two RUC officers were killed would not have had “the means or the information” to assist the IRA.

Judge Smithwick replied that he accepted Mr Hickey’s involvement in the passports affair did not represent collusion with the IRA. “He was not colluding, certainly” he said. "He was not found guilty of colluding with the IRA."