The potential to stop the bomb that became the Omagh bomb had been missed, a defence lawyer claimed at Letterkenny Circuit Court yesterday.
The court heard that a witness cannot be called in defence of a detective sergeant accused of planting a sawn-off shotgun on a north Donegal Travellers' encampment because he was placed in the Witness Protection scheme after he was named in a statement by a detective garda, a Letterkenny Circuit Court jury heard yesterday.
The witness supplied key information that helped prevent several dissident republican attacks in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, the trial heard.
Information from the witness was passed to Garda chiefs by Det Sgt John White, who has pleaded not guilty to possession of a firearm on May 22nd, 1998. On the same night, Det Sgt White received information from his informant that he passed on to Chief Supt (now Assistant Commissioner) Dermot Jennings at Garda headquarters.
The information led to the interception of a 940lb car bomb on its way to a target in Northern Ireland the next day.
Defence barrister Mr Damien Crawford BL said that a few months later Sgt White "had obtained information from his informant, passed it up the line to his superiors, who had not forwarded it to the authorities in Northern Ireland."
"As a consequence, the potential to stop the bomb that became the Omagh bomb was missed," Mr Crawford said.
"If Sgt White were to go public with information like that, he would require the informant to back him up." Mr Crawford said that because the informant was named in a statement by Det Garda Thomas Kilcoyne, he was placed in the Witness Protection scheme.
He said Sgt White had also come forward with information about alleged bugging of privileged meetings between the suspect and solicitors, and cast doubt on an alleged confession by Mr Frank McBrearty Jnr and, as a result, Sgt White was unpopular among senior gardaÃ.
In June 2001, Det Garda Thomas Kilcoyne made a statement in which he said he saw Sgt White obtain, test fire and bring a sawn-off double-barrelled shotgun to a Traveller encampment at Burnfoot, close to the Donegal-Derry border.
Mr Crawford said that a description of a covert surveillance operation in Ashbourne, Co Meath in 1994 was irrelevant to Det Garda Kilcoyne's statement, and "had no purpose other than the deliberate naming of his informant".
"He was taken into the Witness Protection scheme, and his usefulness as an informant ceased," Mr Crawford said.
Mr Crawford said there were ways in which the informant's evidence could be taken in court without his identity being disclosed, and the defence were preparing for that eventuality.
Det Garda Kilcoyne said that he wanted the jury in a future trial to "understand where I was coming from" when he made his statement, which described how he covertly filmed a meeting between a dissident republican and two Dublin criminals.
"It was my decision to make a cautioned statement, not to go to a lawyer, not to go to the GRA, to come in and plead guilty," he said.
"That's why I co-operated so fully, so that it could be said in mitigation that I co-operated."