SMITHWICK TRIBUNAL:THE CREDIBILITY the RUC attached to an intelligence document which named a member of the Garda as being an IRA informer should be revealed, the Smithwick Tribunal has been told.
The document, known as an SB50 and dated 1985, named then det sgt Owen Corrigan of Dundalk Garda station as a man who was passing information to the IRA.
The tribunal heard the SB50 was based on information provided to the RUC by businessman and grain smuggler John McAnulty. Mr McAnulty was abducted from a public house on the Border in 1989 and killed by the IRA.
The tribunal has already heard in closed session details of the grading the RUC attached to the SB50. But Mark Robinson for the PSNI has raised concerns about public disclosure of grading, citing reasons of British national security.
Yesterday, Mr Robinson said he wanted time to respond to argument by Jim O’Callaghan SC for Mr Corrigan that the grading be made public in fairness to his client.
However, Michael Durack SC for the Garda said it was already known the grading consisted of two elements, a letter from A to F and a number from one to six.
He said evidence had been taken that the letter ascribed was “somewhere in the middle”, while he said it had been made known the number was six.
“That is effectively what Mr Robinson is trying to exclude” he said.
Mr O’Callaghan told the tribunal in May his solicitor had reason to believe the grading was C6.
Yesterday, he said parts of RUC intelligence which implicated his client had been allowed into the public domain, but “exculpatory” parts were being excluded. He said this led him to believe the PSNI was “keen to maintain the aura of Garda collusion”. But he said as the PSNI had not put it to Mr Corrigan that he had colluded with the IRA, he felt the organisation did not actually believe this.
The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions of Garda collusion in the murders of two RUC officers by the IRA in 1989.
