Tapping of phone exchange ruled out

A TELECOMS engineer has told the Smithwick Tribunal he did not believe the method of phone tapping, alleged in a 2005 magazine article to have been used by the IRA to intercept a private Garda phone line, could have been used.

Leo Duffy, a technical officer working in exchange maintenance in Dundalk, said it would have been “too complicated” for someone to have gained access to the cable chamber beneath Dundalk telephone exchange and identify and tap a single pair of wires among 2,400 pairs.

The article in the Phoenix magazine in June 2005 claimed the IRA had used the information gained from the phone tapping to assist them in a number of killings in a three year period from 1987.

It would not have been possible for someone to have gained access to the internal cable chamber without an electronic “key fob” pass and to tamper with the exchange without arousing suspicion from staff who were present on a 24-hour basis.

If the correct pair of wires could be identified an attached tap would have been obvious and “very suspicious”, he said.

“I don’t believe that they could have done that. It would have been a very complicated way to do it . . . Nobody had easy access to the exchange.”

A Garda telecommunications expert who was based in Drogheda in 1989 said he was never asked to carry out any investigation in relation to possible phone tapping at Dundalk Garda station.

Garda Garvin McFadden said if there had been any concerns in relation to phone tapping at the station he would have been made aware of it and asked to investigate.

It would have been possible to tap phone lines going into the station at various locations outside the station, he said, but people speaking on the phone would not know if a tap was in place.

Asked by counsel for the Garda Commissioner, Michael Durack SC, if he ever came across any evidence of any attempt to “bug” the Garda station, Garda McFadden said he had not. The tribunal is inquiring into suggestions that a member or members of the Garda in Dundalk colluded with the IRA in the murder of two RUC officers in 1989.

The tribunal continues today.