SUCCESSIVE GOVERNMENTS ignored pleas from a former superintendent in An Garda Síochána seeking files relating to his dismissal after he was wrongly accused of passing information to the IRA, a new book reveals.
Supt William Geary, of Kilrush Garda station in Co Clare, was dismissed from the Garda in June 1928 without being afforded fair procedure to rebut an allegation that he was paid £100 for passing information to the IRA.
Geary, who died in New York in 2004 aged 105, spent 70 years trying to clear his name and repeatedly wrote to ministers for justice seeking the release of confidential files relating to his dismissal only to be told no such files existed.
Brendon K Colvert, the author of a new study, has established that reports on the dismissal by chief supt David Neligan and Garda commissioner Eoin O’Duffy did exist.
Mr Colvert also discovered a photograph of a coded letter sent by the IRA which stated it was paying £100 to Geary and upon which the authorities decided to dismiss Geary. Colvert believes the Garda was duped by the IRA under chief of staff Seán MacBride into dismissing Geary as he was proving highly effective in combating IRA activities in Co Clare in the years after the Civil War.
Mr Colvert, a retired member of An Garda Síochána, became interested in Geary in 1997 but has spent years researching his book On My Honour, launched today at Garda headquarters.
Among those who will speak at the launch will be Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan, Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman of the Supreme Court, former editor of The Irish TimesConor Brady, and Geary's godson, John Patrick Collins, who is a judge of the supreme court of New York. On My Honouris published by Mercier Press.