Appointment of former RUC officer will be a huge shock to many in the force

THE appointment of a former RUC officer with close links to British intelligence will come as a huge shock to many members of An Garda Síochána.

The current PSNI deputy chief constable, Drew Harris, was known to be a front runner among the external candidates for the post, which becomes vacant in September. But few expected the appointment to go to a serving officer from “across the Border”.

Similarly, it was not a surprise in Northern Ireland when serving assistant Garda commissioner Derek Byrne failed to secure the top job with the PSNI, and he was deemed to have performed very creditably to manage to get into the final three.

But despite that, all ranks of the Garda force will rally around Mr Harris when he succeeds existing Acting Commissioner Dónall Ó Cualáin, who is retiring. The rank-and-file Garda Representative Association made it clear at its annual conference last month its focus was on the appointment of a serving police officer rather than a civilian.

The association repeated that view yesterday, when it said it was pleased to note that Mr Harris is a police officer with proven senior operational and management experience on the island.

For several years, Mr Harris has been known to senior Garda management and its key officers on the security side to be the “go-to” man in the PSNI when examining issues of mutual interest. He has served in the RUC and then the PSNI for 35 years and as an assistant chief constable, he was in charge of crime operations for eight years. After promotion to deputy chief constable, he was also responsible for intelligence gathering and operational support and worked closely with Britain’s MI5, as well as being in regular contact with Garda Headquarters.

However, this strong working relationship with the Garda was challenged when he made a dramatic last-minute intervention in the Smithwick Tribunal, which investigated allegations of collusion between a member or members of the Garda and the Provisional IRA.

It was alleged that this collusion played a big part in the ambush and murder of two senior RUC officers, Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan, by the IRA as they were returning across the Border from a meeting with gardaí at Dundalk on March 20, 1989.

The tribunal spent eight years probing into the claims that the murders were the

result of a garda tip-off to the terrorists. Towards the end of the tribunal, Mr Harris introduced startling new evidence in private.

This suggested that there was an unknown informant. At the final day of the public hearings, senior counsel for the Garda described the allegations as “not merely nonsense, but nonsense on stilts” and accused the PSNI of failing to co-operate fully with the tribunal.

However, the tribunal found there had been collusion – but ruled that none of the three gardaí named during the hearings was the informant, who remained unidentified.

As a survivor of the radical transformation of his own force, as it changed from the RUC to the PSNI, Mr Harris will be well equipped to confront the agenda of reform that has been promised for the Garda.

He is also well versed in tackling the threat from dissident terrorists, but he must face a new operational challenge in leading the fight against the feuding gangland outfits, whose murderous activities have already led to a successful overhaul of the Garda response.