A Garda superintendent has said he had doubts about two statements made by a key Garda witness during the Richie Barron investigation. Gerard Cunningham reports.
The statements by Mr Noel McBride, which alleged the McBrearty family threatened him, were later withdrawn.
Supt John McGinley took the first statement on May 4th, 1997, and Sgt Hugh Smith took the second on July 7th. When Mr McBride withdrew his statements later in 1997, he said Garda informer Mr William Doherty put him up to making them.
Supt McGinley said he did not believe either of the statements. He said the circumstances of the second statement were strange and odd.
Mr Doherty accompanied Mr McBride when he made the statement, and Sgt White - a sergeant in Raphoe at the time - had arranged for Mr McBride to give his statement in Letterkenny.
Mr Paudge Dorrian, solicitor for Sgt John White, said that it would be "normal and rational" for the statement to be made to detectives in Letterkenny investigating Mr Barron's death.
Supt McGinley said he would have expected Sgt White to take the statement himself.
Mr Dorrian said his client had been assigned to Raphoe in order to enforce licensing laws, not to investigate Mr Barron's death. "I never heard of a sergeant being allocated to a district to enforce the liquor licensing laws," said Supt McGinley. "There's no such division in the guards."
The superintendent said he had "concerns" about Sgt White, but agreed with Mr Dorrian that he did not know any "factual evidence casting any suspicion" on him.
Mr Doherty was being "protected" by former Supt Kevin Lennon and his handler Garda John O'Dowd, Supt McGinley told the tribunal. He said Mr Lennon should have told investigators about Mr Doherty once they discovered extortion phone calls came from Mr Doherty's home.
"You knew the information he was supplying was false," Supt McGinley told Mr Lennon, who is representing himself.
"On top of that you knew he was a prime suspect for these telephone calls."
Mr Lennon said he had been "upfront" and had told the detectives that he had met Mr Doherty in the past "in a subversive context". "
You could have told us he gave you a bum steer in the past, you could have told us he was wrong. You could have told us lots of things," Supt McGinley said.
Also at the tribunal, Mr Frank McBrearty jnr made an application for immediate discovery of documents relating to surveillance of his family by gardaí during the investigation into the death of Mr Barron.
Mr Justice Morris refused the application, saying he felt the issue properly belonged in another module.