Thatcher was ‘wrong’ to say Gardai failed to take on the IRA

PAUL MURPHY
A FORMER Garda officer who served along the Border area during the Troubles has denied claims made by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher that the force failed to tackle the Provisional IRA on its doorstep.
Michael Finnegan was commenting on reports emerging from the Irish State papers for 1988 and published in the last week which attributed remarks made by Mrs Thatcher (far right) about the response of An Garda Siochana to the rising tide of violent incidents that year. 
She told then Taoiseach Charles Haughey that the Garda was “not a highly professional police force” and had failed to tackle the IRA South of the border.
In several confrontational meetings with Mr Haughey she had delivered scathing assessments of the Irish security services and the failure to garner pre-emptive intelligence on the IRA. 

She implied that the IRA was planning all its activities from five or six locations in the Republic with near impunity. During a meeting with Mr Haughey on the margins of a European Council meeting in Hanover in June 1988, records of which have been released under the 30-year rule, described the killing of two British army corporals by a republican mob during a funeral in Belfast earlier that year as “among the worst things in my life” and added that “the savagery was unbelievable and I don’t think the people who did it were contrite – not the least bit”.

_{Michael Stone attacked mourners at the funerals of three unarmed IRA members by a British army SAS team in March 1988}

Michael Finnegan, who was a serving detective sergeant in Co Meath in 1988 and who later served for seven years as chief superintendent of the Louth-Meath Garda division (2000-2007), told the Meath Chronicle that any idea that the Gardai were “soft” or had “back-pedalled” in pursuit of subversives during that period was “totally incorrect and mistaken”.
“My belief is that right through that IRA campaign the Garda received very good intelligence about the activities of the IRA. I would describe our intelligence flow as quite good. I would totally reject any suggestion that the authorities in the Republic weren’t doing all in their power to combat subversion. Certainly, there was never any direction from any quarter that I know of to ease off in our campaign against subversion.I don’t believe, as was sometimes suggested, that such a directive existed. To say that we had no intelligence about the IRA is not correct”.

_{Tensions were at fever pitch in the North following the killing of two British army corporals during a funeral in Belfast.}

Mr Finnegan said that the situation in North had become “extremely volatile” during that period. Tensions were at “fever pitch” following the shooting of three unarmed IRA members by a British army SAS team in March 1988, followed by an attack on their funeral in Belfast’s Milltown Cemetery by Michael Stone which left a further three people dead and more than 60 people wounded, and the killing of two British army corporals during a funeral in Belfast.
“The tension around that time was unbelievable, frightening . This series of events acted as a rich recruiting ground for the IRA. I know of many young people who joined the Provos who would never otherwise have joined up. The situation was very volatile”, Finnegan said.