Chairman: From what is the Deputy quoting?

Senator J. Walsh: I am quoting from a Garda document. I can supply the Commissioner with a copy of the document which, I understand, came from Store Street Garda Station.

Chairman: Has it been circulated to other members of the sub-committee?

Senator J. Walsh: I do not know. I have given a copy to the Garda Commissioner. Perhaps the Commissioner will obtain a copy of the report and make it available to the sub-committee. I appreciate it will require a little searching on his part. I ask that the sub-committee receive a response.

Chairman: Perhaps the Commissioner will examine the matter and get back to the sub-committee on it as soon as possible.

Commissioner Conroy: I will communicate in writing with it.

Chairman: I thank the Commissioner. Would he like to make any concluding remarks?

Commissioner Conroy: No.

Chairman: I thank the Commissioner for attending. I know that, as always, he has been co-operative with the sub-committee. I hope that if we have further questions in regard to the hearings, we can contact him and will receive the same co-operation in the future.

Commissioner Conroy: Yes, Chairman, that co-operation will continue as far as I am concerned.

Chairman: I thank the Commissioner. Perhaps Detective Superintendent Callinan could remain as we may need to refer to him in our later deliberations with other gardaí. Would that be okay?

Detective Chief Superintendent Martin Callinan: Yes.

Chairman: We will now hear from the Chief-of-Staff of the Defence Forces, Lieutenant General James Sreenan. I thank him for attending and look forward to his co-operation. He is accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Rory Kelleher of the Army ordnance corps who has been helpful to us in the past. We are very grateful for his continued help and co-operation. I also welcome Lieutenant Colonel Dermot Igoe. The sub-committee will first hear a presentation by Lieutenant General Sreenan followed by dialogue with Deputy Ó Feargháil and Deputy Costello on behalf of the sub-committee on his comments and other matters in the report.

Lieutenant General James Sreenan: I thank the Cathaoirleach and distinguished members of the sub-committee for the invitation to appear here this morning. I am accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Rory Kelleher, an experienced ordnance and bomb disposal officer representing the director of the ordnance corps which provides our bomb disposal services. Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher appeared before the sub-committee in connection with the Dublin-Monaghan bombings. I am also accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel Dermot Igoe who has acted as the Defence Forces' point of contact with Mr. Justice Barron and his team.

The Defence Forces are mindful of the great pain caused to the families and victims of the events of 1972 and 1973, the subject of these hearings. I take this opportunity to extend our sympathy to them in their continuing grief.

I am pleased to note that in his second report Mr. Justice Barron has commented favourably on the level of co-operation received from the Defence Forces. A priority of my predecessor, Colm Mangan, and a continuing priority of mine is that every effort be made by the Defence Forces to facilitate the independent commission of inquiry. I understand a good, effective working relationship developed between the Defence Forces and the commission.

In almost all the cases referred to by the commission the input of the Defence Forces was post-explosion EOD team involvement. The primary purpose was to ensure there were no secondary devices in the immediate vicinity or components which remained in a dangerous state. The task of forensic examination of the scene was one for the Garda Síochána. However, the two forces always operated in a co-operative and professional manner. EOD officers would have been available to assist the Garda in its forensic examination, for example, in trying to assess the type and amount of explosive used and where it had been placed.

Prior to 1969, ordnance corps expertise would have been in the area of the disposal of conventional munitions, for example, sea mines washed ashore. From 1969 onwards, a new kind of expertise was developed in response to the threat from improvised devices. We were at an early stage in that regard in 1972. Currently, the ordnance corps is at the leading edge in dealing with such devices.

There do not appear to be any specific areas of this EOD involvement that require further treatment having been extremely well set out in Mr. Justice Barron’s report. However, we remain at the sub-committee’s disposal to answer any questions members may have.

Chairman: I thank Lieutenant General Sreenan.

Deputy Costello: I welcome Lieutenant General Sreenan and his colleagues, Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher and Lieutenant Colonel Igoe. I note a Mr. Igoe was killed in the first bombing in 1972. Was he any relation of Lieutenant Colonel Igoe’s?

Lieutenant Colonel Dermot Igoe: No.

Deputy Costello: Page 19 of Mr. Justice Barron’s report reads: “The Inquiry has continued to receive full co-operation from the Army authorities”. We commence our dialogue on a complimentary note. The report further states: “In particular the Inquiry was given access to all the available reports of Explosive Ordnance Disposal...”. What is meant by “all the available reports”? Were some reports not available?

Lieutenant General Sreenan: To my knowledge, there were no reports that were unavailable to the commission. I take it all the reports were available. I am not aware there were any “missing documents”.

Deputy Costello: All the reports were in place and made available to Mr. Justice Barron.

Lieutenant General Sreenan: That is my understanding.

Deputy Costello: It is not that Mr. Justice Barron requested certain reports and they were made available.

Lieutenant General Sreenan: As Lieutenant Colonel Igoe was the liaison officer, he may be able to answer that question.

Deputy Costello: I ask it because that is what appeared to happen within the Garda Síochána. It appears certain reports were requested and made available but that there might possibly be other reports that were not made available.

Lieutenant General Sreenan: I will ask Lieutenant Colonel Igoe to elaborate on that point as he dealt with Mr. Justice Barron on the matter.

Lieutenant Colonel Igoe: The following paragraph might explain the remark about the availability of reports. Mr. Justice Barron goes on to point out that prior to 1973, reports were not made out for all attendances at EOD scenes. My colleague, Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher, may wish to elaborate further on the matter.

Lieutenant Colonel Rory Kelleher: Prior to 1973, as Lieutenant General Sreenan mentioned, the ordnance corps was involved in conventional disposal. This changed with the arrival of improvised devices in 1969 and 1970. At the time the EOD officer was called out post-explosion. If, in co-operation with the Garda, he or she could find nothing of interest, a negative report was not submitted. There was nothing of interest that he could find in co-operation with the Garda. He did not normally submit a negative report. In other words, there was no report done because there was nothing of interest.

Deputy Costello: The conclusion then is that very little information is extant from that period because it was the custom that they were not necessarily committed to writing.

Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher: The Deputy is absolutely correct.

Deputy Costello: Thank you. Throughout the entire series of bombings, particularly in Dublin, there appears to have been very little residue for the Army disposal team to look at and the Army seemed to be turning up post factum. For example after the bomb on 1 December it was the following morning before the Army disposal team arrived. There is a description in Barron that there was a considerable number of suspect devices around and that the Army disposal team was running from Billy to Jack. Can the witnesses elaborate on the atmosphere at the time and the type of work the Army was doing in relation to the alarms?

Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher: I think the Barron report gives a good account of the second bombing that is referred to, where two ordnance officers spent the night. They would be called by the Garda to go to a particular scene and I think they were called to go to the actual scene of the explosion and en route they were diverted by gardaí to other incidents. I would not call them hoaxes. There is a very good account given by Barron of two officers who spent the night coming and going in dealing with hoaxes. I can recall, not in relation to 1972, that there was a figure in the early 1970s in one particular year where in the order of 500 bomb hoaxes was the tally for the entire year. It always is the case that after an explosion everybody becomes much more aware. It would be incorrect to call them hoaxes but you always have a number of scares where people genuinely see something that they would never have seen before the explosion. Everybody becomes acutely aware and in many cases you have genuine causes for concern and added to that there will be quite a number of hoaxers.

Deputy Costello: That is vividly described in page 52 - perhaps the witnesses can look at it - where Captain P. J. Trears gives an account of what happened on 1 and 2 December. It lists a range of areas to which he was called. The last line on the page reads: “At 1130 hours Chief SuperintendentDoherty requested that I examine the scene of the previous night at Liberty Hall and Sackville Street.” These are the areas where the people were killed and the most serious incident of all took place. It would seem a little late to examine it the following morning.

Lieutenant General Sreenan: It was late and Captain Trears would not be examining it from the forensic point of view. He would be examining it from the point of view of any dangerous materials that were left at the site and from that point of view it is a little bit late. In those days bodies were removed very quickly, fire brigades moved into action very quickly, gardaí were on the scene, Garda ballisticsexperts would have been on the scene and it would have become quickly apparent that there was very little residue or very little left at the scene. Captain Trears’ going there would have very little to offer from the point of view of forensic examination.

Deputy Costello: We move on to page 53. This relates largely to Lieutenant Colonel P. J. McCourt who was the Officer Commanding, Army Ordnance Corps Depot, at the time. He drew up a series of diagnostic recommendations on what should take place. He wrote to Chief Superintendent Joy asking that they be circulated. Barron concludes later on that they do not seem to have been circulated with the result that the new up-to-date measures proposed by Lieutenant Colonel P. J. McCourt had not been put in place in the context of the 1974 bombings. Can the witnesses throw any light on this matter that proposals were made on how to deal with the bomb sites and it was recommended that they be circulated to gardaí? Is there any information on what happened to those and why they do not seem to have been circulated?

Lieutenant General Sreenan: Before I pass to Colonel Kelleher who may have some knowledge of it, these were recommendations made by Colonel McCourt. I do not know how definitive they were. It is surprising to me that they were not put together by the director of the ordnance. They were just his personal observations and an attempt to be helpful, I am sure, by him. They were to be circulated within the Garda system as opposed to within the military. I could not be sure whether they were circulated or not. I do not know whether Colonel Kelleher has anything to add.

Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher: Not really. It appears from the documents that Colonel McCourt gave recommendations. I am not aware of those recommendations at this stage or what they were and whether they were incorporated into Garda procedures after that.

Lieutenant General Sreenan: We were in the midst of a very steep learning curve at this time. Prior to 1969 all our work would have been with conventional munitions - a sea mine washed up, an old hand grenade from the Civil War or the War of Independence. This was the type of work. All of the work within, say, the east was carried out by one particular lieutenant colonel, the man in charge. He was the expert. Suddenly, we had incidents in Donegal, Cork, in the Border and in Dublin and a huge number of people had to be trained and brought up to speed. It was trying to keep in touch with every device that was found and was dismantled. The information on that would be disseminated and people would be brought together and discussions would take place on what was found and how it might be disarmed and dismantled. It was learning on the hoof as it were. In relation to the Garda, it would be fair to say the same was going on. I think there would have been personal contacts and personal protocols established as people became acquainted with each other, Garda and Army.

Deputy Costello: May I ask about the last paragraph on page 48, dealing with the Eden Quay and Sackville Place bombing, which reads:

On 13 December 1972, C/Supt Wren wrote to the Army Director of Intelligence, enclosing copies of the issue of Fógra Tora containing the photofit of the man who hired the cars. He suggested that the picture be shown to members of the Defence Forces - in particular, to anyone who had attended Ordnance or other courses in Britain.

Is there any information to suggest that took place?

Lieutenant Colonel Igoe: The letter was received. There is a record of the letter being received but we have no record of the follow-up action. We presume that it was circulated in the manner that Chief Superintendent Wren had requested at the time.

Deputy Costello: Is there nothing on file now?

Lieutenant Colonel Igoe: No.

Deputy Costello: Or any response?

Lieutenant General Sreenan: There would have been a very small throughput of people on courses in Britain at this time. It may have been one or two individuals over the course of a year. I am sure if it was done it probably would be done on a personal basis rather than in written form.

Deputy Costello: Thank you.

Deputy Ó Feargháil: I welcome Lieutenant General Sreenan, Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher and Lieutenant Colonel Igoe. Perhaps they would say a few words about the process of Army intelligence gathering at the time and the extent to which they shared intelligence with the Garda Síochána and if there was any sharing of intelligence with the British Army or the RUC at that period?

Lieutenant General Sreenan: I think the Deputy would be probably well aware that the Army then, as of today, operated in support of the Garda and the Garda had primacy of operations. We did not communicate with the RUC, we did not communicate with the British forces in Northern Ireland. Our intelligence co-operation with the gardaí would have been in early days but from the time we established military posts on the Border and became involved in operations with the Garda we started to institute a series of regular meetings, and the local military commander would have held these meetings with the divisional chief superintendent. Fairly formal meetings were held, perhaps on a monthly basis, and in addition to that there were many informal meetings. Military intelligence officers visited Garda stations or arranged to meet local detectives. Personal contacts were built up and a fairly good sharing of information and intelligence would have occurred in that way at that time.

Deputy Ó Feargháil: Having regard to the fact that there were five car bombs in the period December 1972 to January 1973, would any body of intelligence have been built up by the Irish Army regarding loyalist subversives?

Lieutenant General Sreenan: It is fair to say that our forces would have been involved in attempting to build up a profile on the organisations the Deputy mentioned in regard to their capacity and intent. Smaller incidents would have fed into the picture but our focus would have been on trying to form a strategic picture of the intent of these organisations at the higher level. Yes, profiles would have been established.

Chairman: Lieutenant General Sreenan, thank you for appearing before the committee and helping us better examine the report. I also thank Lieutenant Colonel Kelleher and Lieutenant Colonel Igoe for their co-operation with the commission as well as with this committee.

Lieutenant General Sreenan: Thank you, Chairman. We wish the committee well in its deliberations.

Chairman: Thank you. You are excused.

We will now hear from members of the Garda who were involved in the investigation of the atrocities that occurred so that they can help us in whatever way they can in our consideration of the report.

I thank you for coming in to assist us in our consideration of the Barron report on the bombings of 1972-1973 and other atrocities at the time. I welcome Mr. Brian Garvey, retired chief superintendent; Mr. Hubert Reynolds, retired detective superintendent; Éamon Ó Fiacháin, retired detective sergeant; and Mr. Martin Hogan, retired detective inspector. You are all welcome to our hearings. I understand these atrocities occurred more than 30 years ago, that you are now retired from the force and that you do not have direct access to the file but I hope you will be able to give us some assistance in regard to the general ambience and what was happening within the Garda and in the investigations generally over that period.

Members of the committee have privilege in what we say but that same privilege does not apply to you. Also, there may be some recollection of the extent of the co-operation you may have had with your RUC counterparts at the time about which we would like to hear. Perhaps Mr. Reynolds would like to start by making a brief statement.

Mr. Hubert Reynolds: In 1973, I was a detective inspector attached to the Garda technical bureau, the investigations section, and our function was to investigate all serious crime. On January I went to Buncrana to assist in the investigation into the murder of Ms Breege Porter and Mr. Boyce. We had set up an incident room in Buncrana Garda station; that was the headquarters for the investigation. It followed the usual lines of any investigation - establishing the movements of the deceased prior to death; their background; and the movements of many people who were around the area of Burnfoot and Buncrana during the day, and particularly that night. There was a particular problem that night. It being New Year's Eve there was a nightclub or a ballroom there and there was a function on that night attended by about 1,500 people. One can imagine the traffic that generated and all the movements at the critical time we believe and have established that the murder occurred, roughly around 1 a.m. or around that time.

There was always the added problem of the location of the scene of the murder. It was in such close proximity to the Border. Very early on in the investigation we established that the perpetrators most likely came from Northern Ireland, around the Derry area. That was confirmed to us later on in the investigation through the co-operation of the RUC. We set up a liaison service between the Garda and the RUC in Derry, and there was very good co-operation between the two forces. Naturally, we could not go in to carry out any of our function in Derry or in Northern Ireland. We were depending on them to make the necessary inquiries and feed the information back to us.

All the usual procedures of an investigation were followed. It was a very thorough investigation. It went on from 1 January, continued on and did not finish until into March and even after that things arose. One of the problems in the course of the investigation, as we went on, was the searches and so on. Guns were found on three suspects and they were brought in for ballistic examination. A number of samples were taken. They had to be processed through the laboratory in Belfast or England. We could not have done that ourselves without the co-operation of the RUC, and they co-operated with us on that.

Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Reynolds. Mr. Garvey, do you wish to contribute?

Mr. Brian Garvey: My function was in relation to the bombings in 1972. It was established that one of the cars used to carry the explosives had been hired out in Belfast and whatever liaison arrangements were in place at the time, through those arrangements I was sent to Belfast where members of the RUC received me. Necessary protection was arranged and so on. I think I went to the airport and got some documentation there. My function would have been twofold or maybe more but certainly I wanted to get the original documentation used to hire the cars with a view to treating the document for fingerprints. I wanted to establish who else might have handled the document with a view to getting fingerprints of people who had, let us say, legitimate reasons for handling the document. I wanted to establish who had written the various material on the document. I am sure I did not want to leave Belfast without establishing this, which I did. I recall I had a difficulty with some document because it had gone back to headquarters in London.

I then went to London where, through the co-operation of the police, I went to the headquarters of some of the big hiring companies, maybe Hertz or Avis, where I got documents. When I brought them back, their treatment fell to Detective Inspector Hogan - he was not in that rank at the time. He treated the documents for fingerprints and it was established eventually that some of the marks had been made by people with legitimate access to the documents and others - we never established who made those. It might have been assumed that they were the fingermarks of the culprit in the case.

Chairman: That leads us directly to former Detective Inspector Hogan.

Mr. Martin Hogan: I joined the fingerprints unit in 1967 and retired in 1996. At the time in question I was at the scene in Burgh Quay and Sackville Place. We got a number of documents and brought them all back. I found my notebook in the case but not the file. I have what I found at the scene at the different areas. One was a book in connection with the Hillman motorcar but this had been destroyed with water and did not yield any marks when we examined it at the time. Later, I received the documents from Chief Superintendent Garvey. I processed them and a number of marks developed. A number of these had been made by the innocent people who had handled the documents but there were four left, especially in relation to the motorcar - 9551 VZ.

What would happen is that anything I would find with names or addresses on it at the scene would be handed over to the investigating people. We would not work in isolation. If we found books or anything like that with names on them or in articles, or papers with any addresses, we would pass copies on to the investigating team and they would carry on from there. When I was contacted to make copies of the marks available, I transferred them to C3 at the time, the security branch, and they transferred them to the RUC.

All during that time we would have had contact with the people in the fingerprints section in the RUC, Scotland Yard, Glasgow and Cardiff. I would have been on personal terms with a good few people there. It remained so until I retired. At this time the inspector in charge of the fingerprints section would have been in liaison with the fingerprints chief in the RUC bureau. He would say to me from time to time, “There’s nothing doing in your case yet.” I did not get this directly from the RUC but would say he had been on to the person because he had said it to me.

Chairman: I thank Mr. Hogan.