Garda chief: I don’t have files on bombers
GARDA Commissioner and former PSNI antiterrorism officer Drew Harris has denied he has files of information on the perpetrators of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings, and said it would be up to the PSNI to release the details.
The 1974 attacks were the most deadly outrage of the Troubles, killing 33 people and wounding more than 300, but no-one has ever been jailed.
Mr Harris’s appointment as Garda Commissioner was criticised in some quarters, due to his previous roles in the PSNI and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, as well as his close links to MI5.
Speaking yesterday, Mr Harris denied having information that could shed new light on the bombings, and said he would be ‘duty-bound’ to report it if he did. ‘The general point is, if we had information which suggested wrongdoing, that would have been required by the [North’s] Police Ombudsman,’ he told Miriam O’Callaghan on RTÉ Radio 1.
‘The overarching duty to prevent and detect crime also remained. If we had information which pertained to atrocities or crimes here in the rest of Ireland, then we are also bound to share that.’
A 2003 report by Justice Henry Barron into the bombings found that members of the RUC had colluded with the Ulster Defence Association and that it was likely British security forces or MI5 intelligence were involved. Mr Harris was appointed deputy chief constable of the PSNI in 2014 after eight years as assistant chief constable, a role in which he worked closely with MI5. Asked if he had files of information on the perpetrators of the bombings, Mr Harris said: ‘No, that information now would lie with the Police Service of Northern Ireland and that’s for them to deal with that appropriately.’
He added that he recognised how badly damaged the public’s confidence in the gardaí is after a number of scandals, and said of his new role: ‘I want to leave it better than I found it.’