WHILE the official line is that the Garda extradition branch consists of a chief superintendent, a superintendent and at least two sergeants, it appears that the section has been seriously understaffed for some time.

This may have followed the reduction in interest in the section following the IRA ceasefire of August, 1994, when the number of controversial extradition cases fell off. The restart of the IRA campaign and the subsequent case involving Mr Anthony Duncan may have found the gardai unprepared.

Legal difficulties over extradition, an important area of criminal justice where the letter of the law is strictly observed, have caused great embarrassment to both the British and Irish governments in the past. However, it was believed technical problems with warrants had been overcome almost a decade ago after the fiasco over three failed attempts to extradite Ms Evelyn Glenholmes in March, 1986.

That case, coming after the Anglo Irish Agreement, threatened relations between the governments. Ms Glenholmes was eventually released without charge and the extradition dropped after the third warrant failed in Dublin District Court. The fault then lay with the British authorities.

After that case, Britain improved its extradition procedures and put more staff in its extradition office at New Scotland Yard.

The Garda extradition section earned a reputation for efficiency and detailed knowledge of warrant handling under Sgt Jim O'Mahony, who retired two years ago. Another officer seen as an expert in the area, Sgt Donald Donovan, left the section last year on secondment to the UN police force in former Yugoslavia.

The controversies over the failed extraditions of Father Patrick Ryan, in October, 1989, and last year over the extradition of Brendan Smyth did not involve any fault by gardai.

The issues in those cases concerned the role of the Attorney General's office. After the Ryan case, procedures were put in place whereby the Attorney General would examine extradition warrants and decide whether the State would agree to attempt to extradite a defendant. In the Father Ryan case, it was decided he would not receive a fair trial in Britain because of adverse public comment on his case.

The Brendan Smyth affair revealed administrative shortcomings in the Attorney General's office. After this affair, and the fall of the last coalition government, the office was strengthened and computerised handling of warrants introduced.

During the late 1980s and 1990s, when there was a series of controversies over extradition, gardai would boast that if there was a problem with extradition papers it would not lie with them.

In the past year, the work has been largely carried out by three sergeants.

In communicating the findings of the internal investigation to the Minister for Justice, the Garda admitted its fault and said new procedures were in place to ensure that it would not recur.

According to senior Garda sources, it was not surprising that clerical or legal difficulties could arise in a case like this where an unexpected arrest was made and precise procedures and paperwork had to be transferred and processed within tight deadlines.

There appears to have been a breakdown in the Garda process around midnight on Friday, April 12th, after the original warrant was delivered by a senior Scotland Yard detective to the Crime and Security Branch. The original warrant, signed by a London magistrate on the front and by Assistant Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy, on the reverse side, should have been the document which was brought to court.

Its disappearance, according to Garda sources, sparked a panic, as it was feared it might have been mislaid or stolen and could have made its way into the hands of subversives. The Garda's eventual public statement on the internal investigation, on Wednesday last, said: "All the documentation was photocopied a number of times and excess copies were disposed of, perhaps shredded." The "perhaps" suggests that even now gardai are uncertain what happened to the original.

It is still unclear, however, why there was no admission that the error occurred at Garda Headquarters and why there was an inference by the Taoiseach, in the Dail on April 24th that Britain was to blame.