A FORMER assistant commissioner of An Garda Síochána, Joe Egan, has questioned the credibility and reliability of a key witness whose testimony led to the establishment of the Smithwick Tribunal.
Mr Egan told the tribunal yesterday that alleged IRA member Peter Keeley, who was known to him as Kevin Fulton, had supplied misleading information to him in the past.
Mr Egan said he had met Mr Keeley and received information from him that was later not found to be sound when investigated.
Mr Keeley, from Newry, Co Down, claims he was a British army agent who served undercover in the IRA. He gave information to Canadian judge Peter Cory that informed Cory’s recommendation to establish the Smithwick Tribunal.
The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that Garda members in Dundalk colluded with the IRA in the fatal shootings of two RUC officers on March 20th, 1989.
Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan were killed minutes after they left a meeting in Dundalk Garda station.
Former judge Cory of the Canadian supreme court in 2003 reviewed the murders and concluded the Provisional IRA had not needed Garda information to mount the fatal ambush in 1989.
However, he drew attention to two intelligence reports that referred to a Garda leak at Dundalk and suggested this issue should be investigated.
Mr Keeley’s suggestion to the Canadian former judge that Det Sgt Owen Corrigan had met with an IRA member Patrick Joseph “Mooch” Blair was one of the reasons Judge Cory recommended a tribunal be established to investigate Garda collusion claims.
Mr Corrigan has strenuously denied the claims and has been granted legal representation at the tribunal. Mr Blair was granted legal representation by the tribunal yesterday.
During his evidence yesterday, Mr Egan said gardaí shared information with the RUC and MI5 during the Troubles. The Garda also had contact with British army intelligence personnel in the North via the RUC. Mr Egan said the south Armagh unit of the IRA could have arranged the ambush of the two RUC officers within 20 to 30 minutes of being told of their arrival in Dundalk station.
Former Garda commissioner Noel Conroy was due to give evidence before the tribunal yesterday afternoon. However, he did not arrive after lunch and when contacted by the tribunal by phone apologised, saying he had mistaken the date he was due to attend. He has agreed to attend this morning.
Retired Det Insp Seán O’Connell told the tribunal yesterday that when based in Dublin and Tralee in the 1970s and 1980s he had heard that Mr Corrigan was “dodgy”. He had also been told to “be careful what you say around him”.
Under cross-examination by Jim O’Callaghan SC for Mr Corrigan, Mr O’Connell conceded the allegations around Mr Corrigan’s character came only in the form of “rumour and talk”. He accepted it was “unsubstantiated rumour”.
He also accepted he had never reported anything he heard about Mr Corrigan, had never asked for an investigation to be opened into him and had never asked for his file or even met Mr Corrigan.
When asked by Mr O’Callaghan why he had not suggested an investigation should take place into what he had heard about Mr Corrigan, he said: “I regarded that as something someone else should investigate, it wasn’t up to me.”