A senior Garda security expert experienced in handling bomb threats has told the Morris tribunal he had never come across a property owner who refused to clear his premises when told by gardaí that a warning had been received.
Det Supt Brendan Cloonan has spent most of his career in the elite Special Detective Unit.
"The overriding duty is the protection of life and the protection of property," Det Supt Cloonan told the tribunal, which is looking at claims by Raphoe publican Frank McBrearty snr that gardaí harassed him and tried to drive him out of business.
The inquiry has heard previously how Mr McBrearty snr and his staff refused to clear the Parting Glass nightclub after bomb warnings were phoned to Highland Radio, Letterkenny General Hospital and the Samaritans.
Eleven hoax warnings were received in the year following the death of hit-and-run victim Richie Barron.
"On receipt of bomb threats, we would always take them very seriously," Supt Cloonan said.
He said the standard practice in the 1990s was to clear an area 150 to 300 yards from the location identified in a bomb warning.
He said it appeared from photographs he had examined that other buildings next to Mr McBrearty's Raphoe nightclub were far enough away that it would not be necessary to evacuate them while the premises were searched by gardaí and staff, unless a suspect device was actually found.
Mr McBrearty has said that because gardaí did not evacuate other buildings in the area, it showed they did not take the hoax warnings seriously.
Later, Garda Phelim Moran told the tribunal that when he searched Paul Quinn, a member of the extended McBrearty family, in February 1997, he found "tabs" that tests later showed contained a controlled substance.
The garda rejected allegations that the drugs were planted, as Mr Quinn has alleged earlier at the tribunal.
Garda Moran said Mr Quinn was not prosecuted over the alleged find because the file on the case was not prepared before the case was statute barred.
"The onus was on me to get the file together and prosecute it, and I failed to do that," he said.