Inquiry on Donegal gardai widening

A Donegal ex-garda admits his family rarely saw him during the years his detective unit was committed to pursuing the IRA in the Border areas "day and night - 23 hours a day". Indeed there is no love lost between the gardai and militant republicans who appear to revel in the force's current difficulties as allegations of corrupt practices are examined by an internal Garda investigation.

One Provo, released early under the Good Friday agreement, passed me the other day in his car and he was making foolish gestures. Anyone will tell you this guy is so stupid he couldn't tie his shoelaces until he was 14."

A comic moment perhaps but poignant also, as this ex-garda experienced first-hand the alleged illegal conduct of some members in his district, one a superior, and could only sit on the sideline while incidents occurred in the years before he left the force. "If I had said anything it would be like accusing a priest of sex abuse 20 years ago - you wouldn't be believed."

The gardai were allegedly involved in the "planting" of crude explosives, using two local women as so-called IRA informers. At the time the men, one of whom has since been suspended, with a second requesting a transfer to another district, were regarded as "the bee's knees" when they located the caches at intervals through the 1990s. One find involved tipping off the RUC in Strabane, Co Tyrone.

During the Troubles, paramilitary activity around the Border was the central preoccupation of the local force and Donegal, with 146-km of boundary with Northern Ireland, has well over 100 Border crossings.

"The finds began around 1993 when paramilitary activity was on the decline. I just don't think the men were interested in ordinary crime. They may have been jealous that some of us had been successful against the IRA down through the years and simply wanted a piece of the action," said the ex-garda. For gardai in the division, ordinary crime now comprises mainly public order offences and traffic offences, with petty family squabbles and breaches of barring orders also regular features of district court sittings. "I'd also say around 90 per cent of all the offences are drink related," comments a local reporter.

Against this backdrop, locals are finding it hard to assimilate the extent and seriousness of the allegations against some local gardai, according to Mr Sean Maloney, a Fine Gael councillor in Letterkenny which is the largest town in Donegal, with a population of around 10,000, and the location of the Garda division headquarters. An estimated 80 per cent of the 128,000 people in Donegal live in rural areas or small towns and villages.

There are 40 smaller Garda stations dotted across the rugged terrain of the county in addition to four district headquarters at Buncrana, Milford, Glenties and Ballyshannon. The exact strength of the force in the county is not given for security reasons but it is thought to be up to 500 officers. 1998 figures show gardai in the northern region have a crime detection rate of 51 per cent, well above the national average of 44 per cent.

"The guards were always the pillars of society up here so people can't believe what they're hearing. No one is really talking about it openly though and the only things being said to the guards about it are by drunks on a Friday night," says Mr Maloney.

However, Mr Maloney admits his own relationship with the force is "only so-so" after he was questioned by gardai last May about a political donation he received from the Raphoe publican, Mr Frank McBrearty, when he was a Labour Party senator.

Mr McBrearty has claimed that some local gardai attempted to frame his son and nephew for the death of Richie Barrons in 1996 and that his extended family suffered Garda harassment. Last month 160 summonses against the McBreartys were dropped by the DPP without explanation. Two local Labour Party members made allegations that Mr Maloney had taken two donations from Mr McBrearty in return for raising his situation in the Senate. Mr Maloney said he received one donation of £480 cash from the publican in 1997, which he then submitted to the party.

The general secretary of the Labour Party, Mr Mike Allen, has confirmed that the two people who made the unsubstantiated allegations against Mr Maloney were officially notified of their expulsion from the party yesterday. Meanwhile, a wall of silence has risen around the investigation team headed by the Assistant Garda Commissioner Mr Kevin Carty, of the northern region, who is based in Sligo. Within the team, efforts have been made to shore up possible leaks and gardai around the State confirm that information about the investigation is being kept "very tight".

Similarly, serving members in Donegal refuse to comment on the allegations or speculate on the contents of the investigation report which is due to be forwarded to the DPP, the Garda Commissioner and the Department of Justice shortly. "We're just fed up and wondering what's next. I don't know anything more than what's in the papers," says one member in a Border station.

Like gardai elsewhere in the country, serving gardai in Donegal are not necessarily natives of the locality. "Surprisingly, some of the boys from Dublin really like it. Maybe it's getting out of the city that they find relaxing but it depends on the work they're doing," says another.

The activities of one garda have recently led to a widening of the Carty investigation to include allegations of wrongful arrest made by Mr Hugh Diver from Ardara. This officer is in turn said to have made allegations about more senior-ranking members of the force.

Mr Diver claims the officer, along with other gardai, wrongfully arrested him, his brother Anthony, who died of cancer five months ago aged 51, and their brother-in-law, Mr Barney Shovlin, in November 1996. The men were held for 24 hours.

The arrests came after a year-long picket was conducted nightly by locals, including Mr Diver, who were protesting at the proposed site of an MMDS mast owned by Cable Management Ireland. Crude explosives were found at the site and when the picket ended, a portacabin with an estimated £80,000 worth of equipment was found burnt down.

Days later the arrests were made and the men were interrogated about the events, of which they said they knew nothing. Mr Diver alleges that late-night phone calls were made to his own home and his brother's home enticing them to a meeting in Dungloe.

Mr Diver says he wants nothing more than to clear his name and the names of his deceased brother and sister-in-law, who died after her husband. "She wasn't a day sick before Anthony's death but she wasn't a day well after it," he says.

Now represented by the same legal team as Mr McBrearty, Mr Diver says he will be "forever grateful" to the publican for opening the door which will enable him to take a court action over the arrests. Commenting on the wider controversy, Mr Diver outlines his view of an underlying malaise in the force that eventually led to the incidents under investigation.

"I still have some very good friends in the gardai but the good ones aren't allowed to do their job - the days of the community policeman are gone. The men that I'm taking about, the bad ones, they don't mix with the community and everything goes into the book. Every little thing is taken to court when it could be sorted out on the ground. They want to get stripes and they don't care who suffers," he says.