Policing on the border in 1970s hampered by a lack of phones

Local & National

Garda detectives were uncontactable

Friday, December 28, 2007

By Brian Hutton

Garda chiefs believed cross- border policing during the darkest days of the Troubles was hampered because detectives in the Republic had no private telephones, according to secret files.

Official documents, marked confidential and just released from the Irish Department of Justice, show half of the Garda Special Branch along the border could not be contacted at home in the late 1970s.

The force's most senior ranking officers appealed to the Irish government to release money to bridge the apparent communications gap between them and their RUC counterparts.

In a report dated April 1976 and branded "secret", an unnamed Garda Assistant Commissioner in the Security Department claims detectives were reluctant to contact the RUC from Garda stations.

The senior officer suggested the lack of private telephones was contributing to a breakdown in much needed contact with Northern detectives only miles away across the border.

"The Northern Ireland authorities have provided private telephones for members of the RUC Special Branch but these members cannot contact members of the Garda Siochana Special Branch except through Garda stations," the report states.

"This method of contact inhibits cooperation as there is an element of secrecy involved, not only as to the content of communication but also as to the fact that contact exists between individual members.

"It will be appreciated members of the Garda Special Branch would be reluctant to openly contact their opposite members in Northern Ireland by using telephones in Garda stations."

The Assistant Commissioner stops short of spelling out exactly why Special Branch detectives would not want rank-and-file colleagues to know about their private contact with the RUC.

He insists that it was agreed in a joint Garda/RUC report on Cross-Border Advance Planning and Operations that all Garda detectives working along the border would have telephones installed at home.

There were 36 detectives assigned to border areas at the time of the original 1976 report, although a review some months later showed there were 37.

Half of the original 36, named in the report and based in counties Donegal, Sligo, Monaghan, Meath and Louth, had no telephones in their homes.

The Assistant Commissioner also highlights elements of the joint Garda/RUC report that encourages "person-to-person contact" between members of Special Branch, North and South.

But an aide of then Justice Minister Patrick Cooney raises concerns about the request for funds and signals a reluctance to foot the bill.

The official points out, in response, that a secure 24-hour system of " radio and telephonic communications" already operated between Garda and RUC stations in border areas for confidential exchanges.

"It is not clear why it should be necessary for individual members... to have telephones at their private residences... particularly as there is a security hazard involved in discussing anything of a security nature on 'open' telephone lines," the official adds.

It appears from the files that Garda chiefs later accept the "usual telephone allowance" for the border detectives, which includes 50% of installation fees, 50% of annual rental and the cost of 360 local calls a year.