IRA has echoes of Nazi brown shirts, says McDowell

Republican paramilitaries have "historical echoes" from the Nazi brown shirts to the Mafia and continue to pose a threat which requires the vigilance of the Irish people, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell said.

Addressing delegates at the AGSI annual conference in Kilkenny last night, Mr McDowell said that although dissident paramilitaries continued to be active, they were not the only ones who posed a threat.

Referring to the Provisional IRA, he said: "Private armies inextricably linked to political parties are, of their nature, profoundly undemocratic. They have historical echoes from the brown shirts to the Mafia."

He defended plans to establish a tribunal of inquiry to investigate allegations of Garda collusion in the 1989 murder of two RUC officers just north of the Border. Mr McDowell said Judge Peter Cory had made his recommendations on the matter and the Government could not refuse to establish a tribunal when the British government had established a number of similar inquiries.

"Remember, the two RUC officers in question, Mr Breen and Mr Buchanan, came unarmed to Dundalk Garda station and they were shot in the most horrific and brutal and cowardly circumstances by an active service unit of the IRA. One of them emerged from their vehicle waving a white flag and one of the IRA active service units, who knew they were unarmed, went over and shot him down and then shot him in the head as he lay on the road.

"That's the kind of thuggery and savagery that has always characterised the IRA." In March 1989 Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan were driving from a meeting with gardaí in Dundalk when they were intercepted and shot dead.

The Minister disputed the media's reporting of the deportation last week of the Nigerian teenager Olunkunle Eluhanla.

He did not believe the boy had been shot four times as he claimed and also did not believe he had no relatives in Nigeria, had nowhere to live and had been deported in his school uniform.