MORRIS TRIBUNAL: A Co Donegal man told the Morris tribunal yesterday that he bought fertiliser, cartridges and bullets for Ms Adrienne McGlinchey, an alleged IRA informer.
The tribunal is examining complaints that some gardaí in Co Donegal may have been involved in hoax explosives and bomb-making equipment finds. Allegations have been made against Det Garda Noel McMahon and Supt Kevin Lennon, who have denied them.
Ms McGlinchey has denied she was an IRA informer, and alleged she was involved in planting hoax explosives with the two gardaí.
Yesterday, Mr Bernard Logue said he lived in a flat above that occupied by Ms McGlinchey and Ms Yvonne Devine in Buncrana in the early 1990s.
Ms McGlinchey had asked him if he could mend a coffee-grinder which had been burnt out. He said coffee was not in it but fertiliser which was ground down to a powder.
Ms McGlinchey had also asked him if he could buy a bag of fertiliser for her. She had gone with him to buy it and they brought it back in a taxi. He left it at the door of her flat.
Mr Logue said Ms McGlinchey at one point asked him if he would get ammunition for her. She had told him her boyfriend was a clay-pigeon shooter.
Mr Peter Charleton SC, for the tribunal, asked what kind of ammunition he had bought.
Mr Logue said he bought Ms McGlinchey cartridges and small bullets on the basis of his father's firearms certificate. He had bought five boxes of cartridges in two trips to the shop. There were about 25 cartridges in each box.
Ms McGlinchey asked him if he knew a welder and showed him a diagram which she had drawn herself of a metal object which was a pipe with fins. He brought the drawing to a welder and it was made up.
Mr Charleton asked if Mr Logue suspected Ms McGlinchey might have had something to do with a terrorist organisation.
Mr Logue said there were Garda raids of her flat but he just thought she was a foolish woman to do such things. "Terrorist people wouldn't have run around doing what they were doing. It would've been hush-hush."
Garda Sgt Michael Murphy said that on May 22nd, 1992, he was on patrol after midnight when he saw Ms McGlinchey acting suspiciously. When he searched her bag, he discovered walkie-talkies, aerials and balaclavas. He arrested her as he suspected she might have been a member of an illegal organisation. He released her later as he said the materials were not conducive to taking a prosecution.
Asked by tribunal chairman, Mr Justice Morris, if he spoke to anybody between arresting and releasing her, Garda Murphy said he did not. He was the officer in charge that night and nobody was influencing him.