Born: February 6th 1955
Died: October 6th 2025
Alan McQuillan, a former PSNI assistant chief constable who has died aged 70, was asked after he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer close to four years ago whether he was afraid of dying. “Not at all,” he replied. As first an RUC and then a PSNI officer, he had escaped death “probably more than a dozen times”, so therefore he could equably face that final challenge.
He told the BBC’s Stephen Nolan that the first time anybody tried to kill him was when he was 15, returning home from school in north Belfast. It was, he said, a “simple sectarian” IRA attack on schoolchildren. He remembered vividly the “flashes” from the barrel of the weapon, the “rattle of machine gunfire and the bullets whistling over his head”, and a group of previously-skipping girls scattering away in terror to safety.
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A member of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the PSNI, McQuillan faced many such attacks from republican and loyalist paramilitaries. He was fortunate to escape relatively unscathed in a long career as a policeman. He joked that coming under gunfire and bomb blasts from both sides made him the “epitome of a balanced Ulsterman”.
McQuillan studied physics and maths at Queen’s University Belfast. On graduation in 1976, he had a research career in astrophysics lined up for himself. However, a student friend told him about a new RUC graduate recruitment scheme that involved an initial all-expenses-paid-for trip to an induction course in England.
They had such a good time in England that McQuillan was surprised he was taken on. His friend did not make the grade. He saw the job as a vocation, serving the whole community.
For much of his career, he was a frontline officer serving in difficult areas such as south Derry, mid-Ulster, south Armagh and Belfast. He rose to the rank of acting deputy chief constable, narrowly missing out on the top job, and also served as first Northern Ireland director of the Assets Recovery Agency, the equivalent of the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) in the Republic.
He was centrally involved in Stormontgate, the alleged IRA spy ring operating at Stormont, and came up against some high-ranking IRA men such as Thomas Slab Murphy and Bobby Storey. Early in his career, while serving in Magherafelt in south Derry, he arrested senior IRA figure Francis Hughes who was wounded in a gun battle in which a British soldier was killed.
Then high on the RUC’s most-wanted list in relation to several killings, Hughes was later to die in 1981 as one of the 10 hunger strikers who fasted to death.
McQuillan also had run-ins with Slab Murphy while serving as a young inspector in Crossmaglen, Co Armagh. On one occasion in 1982, Murphy videoed a failed attempt to arrest him at his home which straddled the Border between south Armagh and north Louth. (Murphy was able to evade arrest by crossing into the Republic when chased by the RUC and into the North when sought by gardaí.)
Four years later, someone asked McQuillan if he know he was a “film star” in the US. He discovered Murphy’s video ended up on a propaganda film broadcast by the IRA-supporting Noraid organisation.
McQuillan was acting deputy chief constable in 2002 when an alleged IRA spy ring operating at Stormont – hence Stormontgate – was broken up by the PSNI. McQuillan said a major intelligence operation was uncovered and that the investigation had taken police “into the very heart of the Provisional IRA”.
Stormontgate led to the collapse of the power-sharing Northern Executive and Assembly, with then-first minister David Trimble saying he could not continue to work with Sinn Féin. McQuillan later acknowledged that at the time, police had also hoped to nab senior IRA man Bobby Storey in the operation but Storey eluded conviction.
McQuillan had the responsibility of trying to manage the Holy Cross dispute in 2001 and 2002, where Catholic children going to school were targeted and harassed by loyalist protesters. Here, he struck up a friendship with then-school governor Fr Aidan Troy, who on Monday (October 20th) participated in a service of remembrance for McQuillan at St Columba’s Church of Ireland parish church in east Belfast.
He was suspicious of the old RUC special branch but stoutly defended the overall record of the RUC, claiming Sinn Féin was trying to “rewrite history” in its attacks on the force.
McQuillan was born in 1955, his father Archibald a fitter in the Harland and Wolff shipyard, his mother Maud a housewife. He said his family possibly were unique in that they were forced from their home twice, once by the IRA, the second time by loyalists.
After internment in 1971, a gunman gave them a couple of hours to leave their home on the Oldpark Road in Ardoyne, north Belfast. They moved to a Protestant part of Ardoyne, but when he joined the RUC years later, his parents had to move again because of loyalist threats.
McQuillan joined the RUC in 1976. He served in Magherafelt, Portadown, Crossmaglen, Holywood and Belfast. In 1995, he was appointed assistant chief constable in the Gwent Constabulary in Wales, returning to the same post in the RUC three years later.
He was sharp and analytical – one of his nicknames was “Two Brains” – and fast-tracked during his career. He was a large man. The other moniker that came from the officers he commanded was Big Mac, a name he took with good humour.
He was one of three candidates shortlisted for the post of PSNI chief constable in 2002, narrowly losing out to Hugh Orde. Though disappointed, he was gracious in his praise for Orde. He was furious, however, when some unionist politicians, disgruntled that an “outsider” had got the top post, claimed none of the candidates met the criteria for the job.
He also accused the DUP of trying and failing to persuade him to take a judicial review against the appointment of Orde, a claim the DUP denied.
The following year he took over as first Northern Ireland director of the Assets Recovery Agency where part of his work again involved Slab Murphy, this time targeting properties he allegedly owned in the greater Manchester area on behalf of the IRA. He enjoyed that work but later complained that, in relation to republican assets, he was hamstrung by political machinations aimed at ensuring the agency should not do anything to upset Sinn Féin and the IRA’s engagement with the peace process.
He retired from the agency in 2008 to concentrate on consultancy work. He also was a regular media contributor on security and political issues. Not long after his diagnosis, he campaigned with the then Northern health minister Robin Swann to raise awareness of prostate cancer.
A number of his former police colleagues told him that heeding his advice led to early diagnosis of their cancers, thus saving their lives.
He believed in freedom of the press and was supportive of the likes of Belfast Telegraph political editor Suzanne Breen and RTÉ Northern editor Vincent Kearney, respectively, over protecting sources and police surveillance. He also claimed there was a special PSNI unit that monitored journalists’ and lawyers’ phones, an allegation the police denied.
Alan McQuillan, who was awarded an OBE, is survived by his wife Heather – whom he described as a constant support in difficult policing times and the “most important” person in his life – and his children, Jane and Andrew.
