Gardaí looking for Ben Dunne saw armed IRA men 'roaming' Border

GARDAÍ SEARCHING for businessman Ben Dunne along the Border in 1981 were able to see armed members of the IRA “roaming” along the northern side of the Border and were unable to apprehend them, the Smithwick Tribunal was told.

Former Det Sgt Seán Gethins told the tribunal the gardaí could see “people carrying guns in camouflage gear” and he believed the IRA had “scouts on every farm” in south Armagh.

He also believed the south Armagh brigade of the IRA had all the approach roads monitored.

He said he believed the IRA had targeted Chief Supt Harry Breen for kidnapping, interrogation and execution.

This was as opposed to Supt Bob Buchanan, who was in the habit of crossing the Border, being the prime target.

Both RUC officers were killed in an IRA ambush at the Edenappa Road in south Armagh minutes after they left a meeting in Dundalk Garda station in 1989.

The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that a member of the Garda based in Dundalk had colluded with the IRA in the killings.

Mr Gethins said he believed the IRA had targeted Supt Breen because he had been the public face of the RUC after the SAS killed an IRA active service unit in Loughgall in May 1987.

The SAS shot dead eight IRA members and a civilian in an ambush.

He said Mr Breen would have also given television interviews after an IRA bomb killed the Hanna family at Killeen near Newry, on the Belfast to Dublin road.

The family were returning home to Hillsborough, Co Down, after a holiday in July 1988.

The bomb had been intended for Northern Ireland High Court Judge Eoin Higgins.

Mr Gethins said the IRA would have believed Supt Breen had information about a possible SAS informer among IRA ranks and would have wanted to interrogate him. But he said the plan had probably gone wrong with one of the ambush party opening fire in panic.

Mr Gethins also told the tribunal he knew Det Sgt Owen Corrigan of Dundalk Garda station very well and he did not believe Mr Corrigan was an IRA mole.

He said Mr Corrigan was abducted and severely beaten and left at the side of the road in a blue boiler suit, the trade mark of the IRA.

The tribunal also heard details of the beating from retired Supt Fergus Dogget and current Supt Jim Sheridan.

They told the tribunal Mr Corrigan had arranged to meet a suspected smuggler Francis Tiernan and farmer Tommy O’Brien in the Boyne Valley Hotel on Wednesday December 13th, 1995.

Hotel staff told the gardaí they had found a number of items such as a tie similar to that worn by Mr Corrigan, and baby seat for a car, some baby clothes covered in blood, a metal bar and some broken glass in the car park.

Mr O’Brien arrived home and went to the Balmoral Agricultural Show in Belfast the following day.

But Mr Corrigan and Mr Tiernan were both abducted and notes of Garda interviews read to the tribunal yesterday described how Mr Corrigan had resisted abduction but was overwhelmed.

According to the notes the men were taken blindfolded to an old farmhouse where their hands were bound behind their backs.

Mr Corrigan allegedly told the gardaí he had been asked about informers in the Dundalk area and when he asked for a drink was given urine.

He said he was beaten upstairs in the house while Mr Tiernan was beaten in a downstairs room.

Both men were released some two days later and refused to make a formal complaint or a written statement to gardaí.