MORRIS TRIBUNAL: A Donegal detective alleged to have planned bogus explosives finds has denied he changed his evidence to "paper over the cracks".
Det Garda Noel McMahon was asked why he had on up to nine occasions passed up the opportunity to state that he had prior knowledge of a "huge find" of home-made explosives in Rossnowlagh uncovered by gardaí in July 1994.
In the weeks before the find Supt Kevin Lennon, who supervised Det Garda McMahon's handling of an alleged informer, Ms Adrienne McGlinchey, wrote a report market "secret" on a planned IRA operation to attack a British army checkpoint in Belleek, stating that explosives were to be packed into a caravan. Det Garda McMahon said his memory was jogged when he reviewed documents before he gave the tribunal evidence.
Det Garda McMahon has told the tribunal that Ms McGlinchey told him the details of the plan a week or so before the find, but when interviewed by the Carty inquiry and tribunal investigators, he had always said the first he knew of it was the night Ms McGlinchey brought him and Supt Kevin Lennon to Rossnowlagh and showed him the cache.
In his initial evidence to the tribunal, Det Garda McMahon also said he first knew of the find the night Ms McGlinchey brought him there. Mr Justice Morris asked the detective which statements had jogged his memory.
"I don't have to point out the importance of this," the judge said. "It looks as if you're trying to support the fact that Supt Lennon was in a position to make all these reports beforehand, at a time before you ever told him about this thing. Now it seems on one interpretation that what you're trying to do is paper over the cracks."
"No, sir, far from it," replied Det Garda McMahon.
He said it occurred to him before he left the tribunal that he might have made an error. "Before I left here it actually occurred to me that I had prior information," he said.