Morris Tribunal: The chairman of the Morris tribunal, Mr Justice Frederick Morris, has said it took his breath away that a senior garda would not pass on information about the importation of AK47 assault rifles to intelligence headquarters in Dublin.
Supt Kevin Lennon, who is alleged to have organised bogus explosives dumps along with another garda, Det Garda Noel McMahon, was questioned about notes he made which were found by the Carty internal Garda inquiry into the activities of Donegal gardaí.
Supt Lennon said he did not pass on to Garda intelligence headquarters a report that four AK47s were brought into Donegal because "it was too vague".
"Would it not be indicative that something big was about to happen?" the tribunal chairman asked.
"Is that not something that should be passed on?"
"I'm not sure if I did pass that on or tell my authorities about it, I don't recall," Supt Lennon replied.
"It should have been passed on but I'm not sure if I did but in any event, it never developed out for me. It was a snippet, it was so general you couldn't get a grip on it."
Mr Justice Morris said: "It takes my breath away that this sort of information was coming in all the time and nothing was done about it.
"Am I to take it and am I to report that this type of information would come to you and other members and not be passed on?" he asked.
The superintendent replied: "I don't know if I passed it on verbally to my chief, but I didn't pass it on to headquarters. It was too vague."
Supt Lennon also said he had not made a report that 40 bags of fertiliser were "in place", and a bomb was in preparation.
"Am I to take this as another example of the way business was conducted in Donegal?" asked the chairman.
"The information was so vague there was no point in putting it in writing," Supt Lennon said. "It was so vague that it was no benefit."
Mr Justice Morris said: "Surely to heavens if everybody was sending up their own information, somebody at the centre might be able to correlate one with the other and make something out of it.
"You had one piece of the jigsaw, possibly."
The judge said a suggestion being made to him was that the notes in question were not intelligence, but notes the superintendent made for himself about his own stockpile, "as against that this was a realistic bomb threat that you didn't bother to pass on".
"I didn't pass it on, the vagueness was of no benefit," Supt Lennon said. "It wasn't my stockpile. This is innocently written-down information that came to me."