Gardai told McBrearty to 'not let go'

Serving and former gardaí told Mr Frank McBrearty snr to "keep up the fight and not let go", the Donegal nightclub owner told…

Serving and former gardaí told Mr Frank McBrearty snr to "keep up the fight and not let go", the Donegal nightclub owner told the Morris Tribunal yesterday.

Mr McBrearty snr, whose family became prime suspects in the death of Raphoe man Mr Richie Barron, was called to give evidence at the request of Supt Kevin Lennon.

"I have suffered for 7½ years at the hands of the State," Mr McBrearty said.

"I have a lot of friends in the Garda and still to this day. Retired and serving members have met me in the streets of Letterkenny and clapped me on the back and said to me 'keep the fight up, don't let go'... And I'm not letting go."

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Mr McBrearty said he became friendly with a retired Donegal garda after receiving a get well card in hospital, and met with him regularly. "We would sit for hours and hours at a time talking, about who did it, about the informers, about all the people that was used to set us up.

"As the time went on, he said 'there's no way you and your family had anything to do with the death of Richie Barron'. When the statement came out that my son was supposed to have made a statement, I asked him about the statement. He said the statement was not worth the paper it was wrote on and when it went to the DPP he said the DPP would sack the guards that done it, which was the four Dublin guards that was sent down to Donegal to fabricate me and my family, sent down by, I think, Mr Shelley and Mr McGinley and Mr Denis Fitzpatrick," he told Mr Justice Morris.

Mr McBrearty said that any information he got, from this retired guard or any other garda, he handed over to the Carty internal Garda inquiry. Supt Lennon said that this retired garda, whose allegations via Mr McBrearty were investigated by the Carty team, was never interviewed by the Carty team.

It emerged at the tribunal yesterday that the investigation file into a series of bounced cheques written by an alleged informer has gone missing.

Det Garda Michael Jennings investigated a series of bad cheques in late 1991, and arrested Ms Adrienne McGlinchey as a result. Ms McGlinchey has alleged that she was initially blackmailed into posing as an IRA member and informer by Det Noel McMahon in 1991 because of a threat of prosecution over these offences.

Because the money was reimbursed, no decision to prosecute was taken, Det Jennings said. He said he had "trawled through Letterkenny Garda station" looking for files on the cheques, but had been unsuccessful. He said there would be difficulty finding most files from that period, unless there was a reason for keeping them. "I don't think there was anything sinister about it," he said.

Earlier, Det Garda Joe Foley was asked by tribunal counsel Mr Anthony Barr about the view of some guards at the time that Ms McGlinchey was in the IRA.

"I would find it extremely difficult to believe she was connected to them at that stage," he said.

Also yesterday, evidence from former Garda commissioner Mr Pat Byrne and assistant commissioner Mr Joe Egan was heard in closed session. Mr Byrne was in charge of crime and security, the anti-terrorist branch of the force, during the early 1990s, and Mr Egan is its current head.

In its current module, the tribunal is investigating claims that two Donegal gardaí, Det Noel McMahon and Supt Kevin Lennon, prepared explosives with Ms Adrienne McGlinchey, for use in bogus arms finds. Both gardaí deny these allegations, and Ms McGlinchey denies she was ever an informer or IRA member.