Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan were murdered by the IRA in March 1989 after leaving a meeting in Dundalk Garda Station
The Smithwick Tribunal should be reopened on the back of the Garda surveillance scandal.
That’s according to the lawyer for the family of former RUC Chief Superintendent Harry Breen, who was gunned down along with his colleague Superintendent Bob Buchanan on their way home from a security meeting in Dundalk in March 1989.
John McBurney said yesterday that the recent revelations that phone calls at stations have been recorded since the 1980s could have major ramifications on the Smithwick Tribunal’s outcome, despite the fact that Judge Peter Smithwick published his findings last December.
Judge Smithwick found gardaí colluded in the RUC men’s double murder but failed to pinpoint definitive evidence to blame an individual officer for informing the IRA of their movements.
His long-running inquiry was repeatedly told by senior gardaí that they did not have suspicions of an IRA mole among their ranks in Dundalk Garda station.
Mr McBurney said it would be incredible if there were no tapes of calls in and out of Dundalk when lines at the divisional headquarters of Drogheda and Monaghan were understood to be under surveillance.
He said: “Judge Smithwick must be troubled. He has the power to reopen an inquiry if he feels that he had information deliberately withheld and that could have been an attempt to pervert the course of justice.
“He would want to look at that further.”
Six ther high-profile cases may also have been discussed on recorded calls in the border region, according to Mr McBurney, including information on Cooley farmer Tom Oliver, who was murdered by Provos in 1991 for allegedly being an informer.
Mr McBurney said he was not claiming a tape exists from Drogheda or Monaghan that proves calls were made to the Provos with information that led to those killings but that they may contradict evidence from gardaí who told the tribunal there were no concerns about an IRA mole.
He said: “It beggars belief that the judge was trying at a basic level to get details of phone calls in Dundalk and could not, yet there could be wholesale recording of conversations at that station and other stations.
“The very first thought that came into my head was the days and days of evidence that we listened to from engineers and garda specialist officers convincing us that the Provos had not bugged Dundalk, that everything had been checked thoroughly, and all along the Garda had bugged themselves.”
Ernie Waterworth, solicitor for the Buchanan family, said the revelations that recordings might exist of phone calls in and out of Dundalk around the time of the double murder is frightening.
“Even the fact that Drogheda and Monaghan could have had the phone lines recorded, to me that causes concern,” he said.
“The people in Dundalk would have been talking to Drogheda when making arrangements for the movements of VIPs, protective operations. The visits of (late RUC Chief Constable) Sir John Hermon, Judge Gibson… All of that is frightening what you could take from it.
“I feel that all of that, the likes of the communications from Garda HQ in Dublin to border stations and so on, Dundalk would have to have been notified.
“The revelations are concerning.”
Mr McBurney said he is minded to contact the head of a commission of inquiry set up to investigate the bugging scandal with his concerns once they are appointed.
