THE MORRIS TRIBUNAL: Ms Adrienne McGlinchey told the Morris tribunal yesterday that Det Garda Noel McMahon had told her to pick up a package from a man in a car and when she opened it she found thousands of pounds in cash.
Ms McGlinchey, on her second day of cross-examination, said she had collected packages two or three times from a middle-aged businessman in a Mercedes car. Some time later, Det Garda McMahon told her when drunk that it was to do with amusement arcades in Buncrana.
Mr Brian Murphy, for Det Garda McMahon, asked her about her statement to the Carty internal Garda investigation in 1999 into Garda corruption in Co Donegal in which it was written that the sum found was £25,000.
Ms McGlinchey said that on two or three occasions Det Garda McMahon rang her at work and told her to hitch-hike home to Buncrana and to wait at a certain spot. There the man in the car would stop and ask her to give Det Garda McMahon a package.
The second time, her curiosity got the better of her. She opened it, and there was "a load of money". "I didn't know what it was. Noel McMahon knows he got that money, and I don't know what it was for," she said.
It was the same man in the car each time. "He was like a businessman. He was like a middle-aged man, I remember," she said.
The first time he had said could she give the bag to Det Garda McMahon. "The second time, I took it to the flat and I remember it was all brown paper and it was all Sellotaped and I looked in and it was all money and it was Irish money and I had it all there out," she said. "There was a load of money. There was thousands in it," Ms McGlinchey said. "I never said £25,000. I don't know how much it was."
Det Garda McMahon then met her in convent grounds near her flat and she gave him the package. "I remember him later he said it was something to do with amusements. He told me when he was drunk. What he told me was that it was to do with amusement arcades in Buncrana," she said.
She said that in 1998 he was blathering on and drinking his brandy. He told her stories - she did not know if they were true - that Supt Kevin Lennon was getting money from two people in Buncrana.
Mr Murphy put it to her that all her allegations about munitions and hoax finds were invented. His client would be denying them. "The truth is the truth and the truth will out no matter how he tries to hide from it," Ms McGlinchey replied.
Mr Murphy asked her about another occasion when she had said Det Garda McMahon asked her to go to the science lab in Letterkenny Technical College and ask students for nitroglycerine. They would pay a student £200, but this did not happen. He put it to her that this was unbelievable.
"He was an unbelievable person," she said.
Mr Murphy asked her about her statements to the Carty inquiry. "Noel McMahon was doing a good job of frying my head," Ms McGlinchey said. She was getting intimidated and harassed by local gardaí and she complained all the time to the Carty team, including Supt Hugh Coll and the Garda Commissioner.
She said gardaí were coming up to her home, shouting things at her in the street, and if she went in to restaurant they would all get up together. It was going on all the time.
She wrote to the Garda Commissioner in July 2000, complaining about leaks to the media from her statements.
She also wrote that she had been blackmailed for years by Det Garda McMahon and Supt Kevin Lennon into planting fertiliser. Her sister typed it and she signed it. She contacted her solicitor to tell him she could not handle it any more.
The tribunal resumes tomorrow.