How does the Prosecution Service decide what is in the public interest, asks Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
No matter from what direction you examined the Stormontgate affair yesterday it was impossible to avoid the whiff of sulphur.
The alleged IRA spy ring was the incident that collapsed the Northern Executive and Assembly in October 2002. Since then the North's snail-pace, frustrating political business has been about restoring that shaky edifice.
The three men - Denis Donaldson, Sinn Féin's then head of administration at Stormont; his son-in-law Ciarán Kearney; and William Mackessy, a former Stormont porter - now enjoy the presumption of innocence, as the PSNI rather grudgingly conceded yesterday.
With some degree of irony the men are due to speak with Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams at a press conference at Stormont today. It's a hand-served propaganda coup for Sinn Féin. Martin McGuinness has already blamed the "securocrats" for the whole affair. "There was never a spy ring," he said.
The PSNI, backed up by a supporting Northern Ireland Office statement, insisted however that notwithstanding the men's acquittal the IRA did operate an intelligence-gathering operation at Stormont. They had recovered "thousands of sensitive [ NIO] documents" to establish this as fact, police said.
Last year too, the then NIO security minister Ian Pearson said that included in these documents were the personal details of 1,426 prison staff. This led to the rehousing of 454 prison officers, improved security arrangements for others, and numerous claims for compensation for stress. The overall cost to the exchequer was likely to be £30 million, said Mr Pearson.
The North's Public Prosecution Service (equivalent of the DPP in the South) decided that the case should fold because "prosecutions for the offences in relation to the accused are no longer in the public interest".
If the director of the prosecution service explained what "no longer in the public interest" meant we would be wiser about this intriguing and murky case.
The Irish Times asked the service for elaboration but a spokesman said he could not go beyond what was said in court.
Unionist parties and the SDLP have the strong suspicion that this somehow was part of an NIO deal to get the IRA to end its armed campaign and decommission. The prosecution service spokesman said neither would he be commenting on this suggestion. Yet if these parties made such a direct charge against the Public Prosecution Service they would be likely to receive a response that this office was independent of the NIO. "I can say absolutely there was no deal," said an NIO spokesman yesterday.
One possible reason relates to security source claims shortly after the arrests that the breaking of the alleged spy ring was assisted by a police agent operating "deep within the IRA", and that proceeding with the case would compromise the agent.
Another curious element in the case is that the then Northern secretary, John Reid, was informed by MI5 of the alleged IRA spy ring months before police Special Branch so cack-handedly raided the Sinn Féin offices at Stormont in October 2002.
It was explained by well-placed sources that the MI5 and Special Branch reason for not immediately cracking down on the IRA spy ring at the time was because there was more to be gained by allowing the IRA to continue its operations.
MI5 and the RUC were also hoping that in this manner they could nab the IRA's Belfast-based head of intelligence, it was claimed. They didn't. Sources said the police moved only when it was learned that the IRA was aware it was observed and that the IRA was planning to destroy the stolen documents.
Another deeper conspiracy theory is that MI5 took it upon itself to move against the IRA to try to protect David Trimble. Shortly before the raids, Mr Trimble, on the instructions of the Ulster Unionist Council, signalled that he would collapse the Northern Executive and Assembly in January 2003. This theory runs that by making the arrests, the "spooks" were shifting the blame for the Executive's collapse on to the IRA rather than the former UUP leader.
There are other conspiracy theories out there but no definitive explanations. It all rather reeks to high heaven, doesn't it? Lots of questions, no real answers. People will believe whom they want to believe. The Public Prosecution Service talks about its version of the public interest but here it would seem genuinely in the public interest that the service should lift the veil and reveal more.