MORRIS TRIBUNAL: The Morris tribunal is entitled to conclude that a cross-Border incident where an alleged informer carried munitions from Donegal to Strabane in September 1993 was "a bogus operation" orchestrated by two Donegal gardaí, a lawyer has said in closing submissions.
Mr Paul Murray, barrister for Ms Adrienne McGlinchey, said discrepancies between different accounts given over the years by one of the gardaí, Det Garda Noel McMahon, were "indicative of somebody who is clearly telling lies, and who engages in more lies when confronted with an earlier set of lies".
Mr Murray said his client had "given a very simple account of what happened".
The incident, where Ms McGlinchey carried a Tupperware box of rifle and shotgun cartridges across the Border before abandoning it, led to a major security alert, with the RUC sealing off the area.
Mr Murray said Supt Kevin Lennon changed his account of the incident when his original statements were "undermined by the evidence from the PSNI.
"At the time Kevin Lennon was giving his various accounts of what happened at Strabane to the Carty team and the tribunal investigators, he was not to know of course that members of the PSNI were going to be called and what they were going to say.
"Having heard what they said, Kevin Lennon was faced with a problem that their evidence was inconsistent with his."
The entire incident was "entirely consistent with same being a bogus operation orchestrated by Noel McMahon and Kevin Lennon".
Mr Murray also argued that it was his client's version of events that should be accepted by the tribunal in relation to an attempted search of her flat in October 1993 rather than "the fraud being perpetrated by Noel McMahon and Kevin Lennon on the Garda authorities".
The tribunal should also accept his client's account of an explosives find at Ardchicken near Donegal town in December of the same year, rather than the "irreconcilable accounts of Det McMahon and Supt Lennon", and "make a finding of fact that Ms McGlinchey's account of what happened at Ardchicken is correct".
The "managing explosives" module, now in its closing stages, examined allegations by alleged IRA informer Ms McGlinchey that Supt Lennon and Det McMahon, manufactured bogus IRA finds in Donegal a decade ago. Both gardaí deny the allegations, and Ms McGlinchey denies she was ever an informer or a member of the IRA.
The tribunal continues.