Ireland’s Prime Minister, Enda Kenny, has described a high-powered report that found collusion between the IRA and the Garda Siochana in the murder of two top Northern Ireland police officers as “absolutely shocking”.
While on a trade mission to Japan yesterday the taoiseach was asked about the Smithwick report, which concluded that “on the balance of probability” some Garda officers had aided the IRA in assassinating two senior Royal Ulster Constabulary detectives in 1989.
Kenny said he backed his Justice Minister Alan Shatter’s offer of an apology to the families of chief superintendent Harry Breen and superintendent Bob Buchanan, who were caught in an IRA ambush on the north Louth-south Armagh border.
The pair had been returning from a joint RUC-Garda security conference in Dundalk where they were discussing how to target one-time IRA chief of staff and millionaire smuggler Thomas “Slab” Murphy.
The Breen/Buchanan families alleged the Garda officers had passed on intelligence to the IRA about the policemen.
In response to the report, the taoiseach said he was willing to meet the murdered officers’ loved ones.
Meanwhile the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, came under attack for appearing to blame the victims for the murders. The Louth TD claimed the pair had taken a “laissez-faire” attitude to their personal security.
Adams claimed the RUC officers “seemed to think that they were immune from attack by the IRA and tragically as it turned out for them that wasn’t the case”.
His remarks were sharply criticised by the leader of the main opposition party in the Republic Fianna Fail, Micheal Martin, in the Dail yesterday.
Martin’s party colleague and Fianna Fail justice spokesman said most Irish people would react with “disbelief and disgust” to Adams’ comments.