Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

On 16 December last year, I said in the House, in respect of the allegations that have given rise to the Nally report: "...there can be no argument but that they are the most profoundly serious that could be made against a law enforcement agency tasked with the preservation of life and public safety". I pointed to the report's firm conclusion that there was no foundation for the allegations and that "the allegations were a direct consequence of and were motivated by concerns arising from the difficulties in which the named garda found himself with his superiors in the Garda Síochána and with the criminal law".

The sensitivity of its contents had been impressed upon me and the Minister's intention not to publish the report had been made known in advance. As I was conscious of the high degree of sensitivity stated to attach to the report, I could not then place the detail of it in the public domain to any significant extent greater than the Minister had done. My notes made then will, however, form the basis of what I want to say now. I made it clear that, in the time available to me to digest the report, I was not in a position to "query the group's methodology of analysis, to point to unexplored lines of inquiry, to put forward alternative hypotheses or to second-guess its conclusions". Finally, I called on the Minister, in the interim period between that date and today's opportunity for further statements on the matter, to examine whether a version of this report that did not prejudice ongoing security operations could be made available to the Omagh families.

However, despite requests from the victims group and from Deputy Kenny and me, the Minister and the Taoiseach have apparently felt unable to respond to those urgings, presumably for the reasons the Minister outlined earlier. In these circumstances, I am at a loss to know what purpose was served by supplying both me and Deputy Kenny, alone of the 151 non-Cabinet Members of this House — presuming that all members of the Government were given a copy — with the report and then timetabling two sessions of statements in the House on a document that not only the public but most of the Members have not seen and which those who have seen it felt obliged not to discuss in the detail that it undoubtedly deserves.

Perhaps some type of convention was in the process of being invented, along the lines of the convention that a British Government might share confidences with privy counsellors on the opposition front benches. It was, for example, pointed out that both Deputy Kenny and I were former Ministers and members of the Cabinet. If some such distinction was in the Minister's mind when he chose to supply us with the report, it is a precedent which may be better not repeated. If the Government feels unable to publish even a redacted version of a sensitive document, I do not want to see it because, if I am not happy with it, I am in not in an position to explain my concerns as adequately as I should. In fact, the net effect might be to spancel Opposition scrutiny, rather than assist in informed debate. I do not claim that the Minister had such a purpose here. I do not regard my having seen the report and my having had time to think about it in greater detail than when I first spoke on it as conferring a seal of approval on its methodology.

It is now a matter of common and public knowledge that the report deals with an informant of the detective sergeant referred to by the Minister. That informant went to the Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman with his allegations as to how the intelligence he was providing was dealt with by the Garda Síochána. The relatives of those killed in the bombing have called on the Garda to allow the PSNI team investigating Omagh to interview the informant who now lives abroad under the Garda witness protection programme. The PSNI's senior investigating officer, Superintendent Norman Baxter, has apparently made three requests to the Garda to interview the said informant, all of which have been denied.

The informant named was a car thief who is said to have had contacts first with the Provisional IRA and then, after the 1997 split, with the Real IRA. He provided intelligence on nine Real IRA bomb plots between February and August 1998. He is widely reported to have organised the theft of cars which were used to transport bombs and mortar rockets to Britain and Northern Ireland. In the transcript of a taped conversation between the informant and the detective sergeant, reported in the British Observer, he says he gave the Garda intelligence about a stolen car to be used in a bombing in Northern Ireland, just 24 hours before the Omagh massacre: "They [the Real IRA] had got a car and they [the Garda] knew it was moving; they knew it was moving within 24 hours of that stage".

I have some problems with more than one aspect of the report. Deputy Kenny has previously referred to the fact that the major source of the allegations investigated by the Nally group, whose communications with Ms Nuala O'Loan were the cause of the original report by her to the Irish Government, has not been interviewed by the Nally group, let alone by the PSNI. This is despite the fact that the informant apparently remains on the witness protection programme and is in liaison with members of the force — the force against some of whose most senior officers he makes serious allegations. I listened to the Minister's comments about that. The informant's whereabouts are known, but it was not clear from my somewhat hurried reading of the report in December that he had declined on legal advice to assist the investigation. I have no reason to suspect that if the informant had been interviewed, the conclusions would have been in any way different.

However, it remains a difficulty and other issues arise. In general, it appears there is a significant difference between what the inquiry team was willing to accept from the gardaí by way of evidence and explanation as opposed to what it accepted from the disaffected detective sergeant. The team went through a forensic examination of the sergeant's evidence and highlighted inconsistencies and contradictions. However, when it came to the gardaí, a similar level of rigour was not applied and claims by gardaí that were unsupported by evidence were accepted without doubt. Without having been present at the interviews it is difficult to do more than record that observation.

The first allegation dealt with in the Nally report has to do with the theft of a car in this jurisdiction, which may later have been used in the mortar bombing of Armagh RUC station on 10 March 1998. It is common case that the detective's informant had contacted him on 13 February of that year to say that he had been asked by an individual described as "one of the main organisers of logistical arrangements" for the Real IRA, to steal a high-powered hatchback. Although information about a car and its storage locations were provided to the detective, it is also common case that none of this information was communicated to the RUC. The stolen car was found burnt out in County Monaghan three days after the Armagh bombing. The Garda conceded the car may have been used in the mortar attack but said it was unaware of any firm investigative link.

Outlining why the information about the theft of the car was not passed on to the RUC, the report describes a senior Garda officer as explaining:

It has to be borne in mind that the RIRA would have had a lot of cars which might be for special jobs "like bank robberies" but would not be for bombings. If there was any indication whatsoever that the stolen car was going to Northern Ireland or across to Britain, the Gardaí would be on to the RUC or the British police straightaway."

One must bear in mind, however, that the Provisional IRA had been on 'resumed' ceasefire since 20 July 1997, and in October 1997, following a general army convention, republican dissidents had withdrawn to establish the Real IRA. One must also bear in mind that the Garda informant was told by his contact that "the boys are back in business", sometime in mid-January 1998. According to the report:

Much of the information provided by the Detective Sergeant and his informant in 1998 was sensitive and valuable and, together with a great deal of other valuable and sensitive intelligence, was received at a critical period in the establishment of the RIRA.

Another point to bear in mind is that the first action subsequently attributed to the Real IRA was on 6 January 1998, and was an attempted car bomb. Of the 28 incidents attributed by the report to the Real IRA, not a single one was a bank robbery or even closely resembled a bank robbery.

A second example exists. In regard to the theft of a Mazda motor car, the detective sergeant claimed that the Real IRA contact told the informant that the car might or would be used in a mortar attack and that he — the detective — then passed this information on to his superiors. This was denied and it was claimed in rebuttal that an individual such as the Real IRA contact would not tell a car thief what use the Real IRA would make of a stolen car. This assertion was accepted by the inquiry team.

However, in regard to another stolen car, a Punto, the Real IRA man told the car thief that it was to be burnt outside someone's house as a warning. The car thief and the detective disbelieved this and, according to the detective, he informed his superiors that it would probably be used in a mortar attack.

His superiors insist that the only information they had regarding the Punto was that it was to be burnt out. In this case, the previous contention that the Real IRA would never reveal the purpose to which a stolen car would be put is ignored, perhaps because it suited the official position. The inquiry team never raised this apparent contradiction.

In regard to the Punto, the detective claimed, as I said, that he informed his superiors the car might be used in a mortar attack. According to him, his superiors, concerned about protecting the informant, were of the belief that "it was unlikely that any loss of life would result from such an attack" and decided to let the car through.

The response from the detective's superior was:

It was the most insulting thing that anybody could say to him that he would let something go through because it would involve only a mortar attack and only material damage would be likely to be caused because, given his experience he would know well that a home-made rocket is unpredictable and a most lethal and dangerous thing.

To support this case, an inventory of Provisional IRA and Real IRA mortar attacks since 1986 is included in the report. However, the only conclusion from this inventory is that mortars were a lethal weapon in the hands of the Provisional IRA, but not in the hands of the Real IRA.

Six individual Real IRA mortar attacks were reported, but no casualties were reported in any attack. In addition, the failure rate of these mortars was very high. On 10 March 1998, two out of five mortars failed to explode. In regard to the attacks of 24 March 1998 in Forkhill and Armagh no details were provided of how many failed to explode. In the next three Real IRA mortar attacks the device failed to function in each case. However, since the details about mortar attacks are apparently included in the report to bolster the official line, the high rate of failure in Real IRA mortar attacks is not alluded to.

Time and again in the report, reference is made to excellent co-operation between the PSNI and the Garda. The report states:

The Group has been very impressed by the strength of the opinions expressed to it by a serving and three retired senior officers of the RUC/PSNI when they emphasised the total co-operation ... and the degree of trust which had developed between the two police forces.

However, elsewhere in the report we are informed that the PSNI Omagh team identified a link between earlier events in 1998, referred to by the detective sergeant in his intelligence reports, and the Omagh bombing. The official line is that the Garda was not aware of any intelligence identifying such a link. What does this discrepancy reveal about the degree of co-operation? The Garda authorities were not asked about this contradiction.

Again, in regard to co-operation, in at least two instances senior Garda officers were quoted as stating that, despite the lack of a paper record, they would have informed RUC counterparts of events such as, for example, burnt out cars being found. The relevant RUC officers cannot specifically recall being informed of these events but stated that if their Garda counterparts said so, it must have happened. I do not query that, but no records appear to exist to buttress it.

Despite the absence of a paper record and the clear failure of the RUC to recall information being passed to it, the inquiry team accepted this as being the case. On the other hand, the disaffected detective sergeant was not at any stage afforded such a benefit of the doubt by the inquiry team.

The report quoted the PSNI Omagh inquiry team as identifying individuals linked to the informant as being connected with the construction of the Omagh car bomb. However, senior gardaí, aware of all Garda and PSNI intelligence on Omagh, said they never received any "even remotely similar" intelligence. They said the informant was a car thief and "not connected to any persons connected to the construction of the car bomb."

To prove an entirely different point, this time in favour of the senior officers rather than the disaffected detective sergeant, the report quoted the Garda as having passed on to the PSNI an intelligence report received from the detective. This was to the effect that when the Real IRA contact learned of the arrest of a car thief who had previously been connected with the informant, and thereby with him, "he was so concerned that he might talk that he arranged to meet the car thief's father the next day and warned him that if he found out that his son had talked about the explosives part of things he would have him shot". I am not clear how that passage is easily reconciled with the assertion that the informant was "not connected to any persons connected to the construction of the car bomb".

I want to make one point crystal clear, I am in no way persuaded of the truth of any of the detective sergeant's allegations, let alone of all of them, and, needless to say, the report of the Nally group does nothing to promote his case. However, I repeat what I said on the last occasion we discussed this matter and earlier in these remarks. It was possible for the ombudsman in Northern Ireland to provide the families most affected by the Omagh tragedy with a considerable amount of information. I strongly believe that the Government must find a way to provide the families with as much information as is possible without compromising the undoubtedly valid arguments the Minister has relating to sensitive security material. I welcome the remarks the Minister made, if I interpret them correctly, in saying that once contemplated litigation is disposed of he may be in a position to make available to the relatives a redacted version of the report. That would be very helpful.

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