TD says gardaí induced people to sell drugs to ‘boost crime figures’

Independent TD Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan has claimed senior gardaí induced young people to sell drugs to undercover officers in an effort to boost crime detection figures.

In the Dáil this morning he named a new whistleblower, serving Garda Nick Keogh, based in Athlone, whom he said was today giving information to the interim confidential recipient, retired judge Patrick McMahon and was taking a "grave risk" by going public.

The Roscommon-South Leitrim TD said the garda was forced to go public because in his Garda station whistleblowers were being referred to as “snitches”.

Mr Flanagan cited a number of "grave allegations" made by the garda including the cover-up of the original file of an incident, where the file was stolen and the incident removed from the pulse system.

New statements were created and an accused was threatened by a garda to plead guilty to an offence, he said.

According to Mr Flanagan, the garda’s greatest concern was a drugs operation where there was a “systematic and orchestrated effort by high ranking Garda officers to induce and coerce Irish citizens, in this case with no previous criminal convictions, to buy drugs from dealers and in doing so putting them in personal danger and in turn to sell drugs to undercover gardaí without making any profit, thus boosting crime detection figures for arrests”.

Mr Flanagan said a “grave aspect” of the operation, was that a significant and well recognised drug dealer in the area - “long associated with a senior member of the drugs unit” - was not targeted.

He asked Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn, who was taking leaders’ questions: “What are you going to do to reassure this person that he won’t be bullied, he won’t have a rat hung on his door”.

He asked would the Government let him know that he was a “hero” and not a “rat”.

Mr Quinn said the Labour Party and the Government was committed to having a proper Ombudsman for gardaí and a proper complaints procedure and introducing a Garda authority, so that the incidents Mr Flanagan was talking about would not reoccur.

Mr Flanagan is running as a European election candidate.