A senior Garda officer has vehemently rejected a suggestion that he told a detective sergeant that gardaí had "decided to let one through" shortly before republican dissidents moved a car across the Border and planted a bomb in Omagh, Co Tyrone, which killed 29 people.
He was responding to questions about an allegation that gardaí had allowed a car to cross the Border in suspicious circumstances to protect a confidential source providing information about subversives in 1998.
Assistant Commissioner Dermot Jennings said it was an "absolute lie" that he had made any such statement to Det Sgt John White during a meeting in a Dublin pub in early August 1999, while he was the chief superintendent in charge of the security and intelligence section of An Garda Síochána.
Det Sgt White denies charges of planting a sawn-off shotgun near a Traveller encampment in north Donegal in May 1998.
Mr Jennings said he was in regular contact with Det Sgt White between February and May 1998, and intermittently until September 1998, when the sergeant developed "a source who had information that was of great assistance".
He said Det Sgt White "wasn't very experienced in dealing with the type of intelligence he was getting. I gave him a lot of advice." The intelligence provided "a vital piece of the jigsaw" and led to "notable successes", including three occasions where arrests were made, he said, but by June 1998 the source was "drying up" and was "basically finished".
Mr Jennings said that in a meeting in early August, Det Sgt White told him that the source, who was not himself a member of any subversive organisation, "possibly would be asked to supply something again". He told Det Sgt White to contact him if he received any further information.
"Nothing ever developed from that, judge, and that's a fact," Mr Jennings said.
The assistant commissioner said Det Sgt White had not told him that there were "people looking for a car for a bomb" and it was an "absolute lie" that he told Det Sgt White that anyone "decided to let this one through to protect the informant" at the meeting, which took place shortly before republican dissidents planted a bomb in Omagh, Co Tyrone, which killed 29 people.
"The truth is, and I said it yesterday, I did not receive any information from Det Sgt White which in any way could indicate that a bomb was going to explode at any location," Mr Jennings told the judge. "What Sgt White is asserting is a total lie."
Det Sgt White submitted a confidential report on August 18th, 1998, three days after the Omagh attack. "There was no indication whatsoever in the report that a device or bomb was travelling in August to Northern Ireland," Mr Jennings said." Mr Jennings said he emphasised to Det Sgt White the importance of keeping his source confidential, and was "disturbed" to hear the sergeant had a copy of the confidential report in his home.
"If, God forbid, somebody broke into his home, I would be very concerned about the consequences," he told the trial. He was also "disturbed" when he read a witness statement by Det Garda Thomas Kilcoyne which named the source, as Det Garda Kilcoyne "obviously" had received the information from Det Sgt White.
However, he said he had no difficulty with the detectives who took Det Garda Kilcoyne's statement recording the source's name, as the statement would go to law officers in the Chief State Solicitor and DPP's office and names could be edited before the statement was put to a jury in a public trial.
Mr Jennings also said he did not give Det Sgt White any information about a group of Travellers in north Donegal in 1998. The trial resumes on Monday.