Former Taoiseach Told Garda Not To Assist NI Officials

The Smithwick Tribunal has heard how former taoiseach Jack Lynch told the Garda to give Northern authorties no assistance in their investigation of the Narrow Water bombing in which 18 British soldiers were killed,

The Narrow Water bombing in August 1979 represented the single biggest loss of British army lives during the Troubles. Two bombs were detonated, allegedly from the southern side of Carlingford Lough, as a convoy of soldiers, mostly of the Parachute Regiment, passed Narrow Water Castle in Co Down.

Gardaí had arrested two republican suspects on the south side of Carlingford Lough on the day of the atrocity, but released them after charging them with motoring offences.

A former deputy assistant chief constable of the RUC, referred to only as Witness 68, told the tribunal that the RUC were keen to get access to the two suspects should gardaí rearrest them.

Speaking via a videolink from Belfast, Witness 68 said he was present at a meeting in Dublin Castle in April 1980, one of a series of four meetings when the RUC made a number of requests for Garda co-operation in gaining access to the suspects.

Witness 68 went on to recall how an assistant Garda commissioner named McLaughlin told the RUC officers present, in the course of an acrimonious meeting, that the taoiseach, "from the outset of the inquiry, had decreed that the killings were a political crime and no assistance be given to the RUC”. He said Mr McLaughlin had told the RUC men there was no point in them coming back to Dublin again.

The taoiseach he was referring to was Jack Lynch, who had actually been succeeded by Charles Haughey by the time of the meeting in 1980.