Former top garda casts doubt on RUC report

FORMER GARDA commissioner Noel Conroy said he would “be very surprised” if an account of RUC suspicions of an alleged IRA mole in Dundalk Garda station, given to the Smithwick Tribunal, was correct.

The account was given to the tribunal by former Garda chief superintendent Tom Curran who said RUC officer Bob Buchanan had personally asked him to relay RUC concern about Det Sgt Owen Corrigan to Garda headquarters in Dublin.

Supt Buchanan was killed in an IRA ambush as he returned from a meeting in Dundalk Garda station on March 20th, 1989. Also killed in the ambush was RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen.

The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that members of the Garda or other employees of the State colluded in the killings.

Mr Curran has told the tribunal that the request from Mr Buchanan related to alleged links between Det Sgt Owen Corrigan of Dundalk Garda station and the IRA.

Mr Curran had gone to Dublin and spoken to then assistant commissioner Eugene Crowley, but Mr Crowley had continued reading a file and never commented on the information.

However when Mr Curran’s evidence was recalled at the tribunal for Mr Conroy yesterday, the former commissioner said he would be “surprised” and “shocked” if Mr Curran’s account was accurate.

Mr Conroy told Justin Dillon SC, for the tribunal, he had known and worked with Mr Crowley and knew Mr Crowley to be a scrupulous officer who would be unlikely to ignore such intelligence.

Mr Conroy said he was “not for one moment suggesting” that his former colleague Mr Curran “was telling lies”.

But he said: “I am shocked to think he would do what was alleged because that is not the Mr Crowley I knew.”

He said the implication of Mr Curran’s evidence was that the RUC did not trust senior Garda officers in Dublin who would be the normal channels for such information.

“I can not understand how that could happen,” he said. “We talk at chief superintendent level, at superintendent level, assistant commissioner level and deputy commissioner level and, of course, with commissioner and chief constable as well,” he said.