HEARINGS at a Dublin tribunal into claims of collusion between gardai and the IRA in the murder of two senior RUC officers will resume this morning.
Chief supt Harry Breen and supt Bob Buchanan were murdered in an IRA ambush in south Armagh on March 20, 1989 as they returned from a meeting at Dundalk Garda Station.
Chief supt Breen was the most senior RUC officer to be killed during the Troubles.
The Smithwick Tribunal was set up in 2005 to probe claims that Garda members collaborated with the IRA in the murders.
Former district judge Peter Smithwick started hearing evidence in public sittings in June.
However, there was outrage voiced by supporters of the tribunal, including unionists in Northern Ireland, when the Irish parliament voted that the tribunal finishes by the end of November.
Three former Garda sergeants have been named by the tribunal as being at the centre of the collusion rumours. They are Owen Corrigan, Leo Colton and Finbarr Hickey.
Mr Hickey has a previous conviction in the Republic for supplying signed Irish passport forms for IRA members.
The hearing has heard that several key documents relating to the time of the murders, including station diaries, have gone missing from Dundalk Garda Station.
Retired Garda supt Tom Connolly also told the tribunal that there were concerns about a garda but he was asked then not to name him. He named the garda as Owen Corrigan. Supt Connolly insisted many other gardai were aware of this too.
Mr Corrigan’s legal team slammed the claims as a “monstrous lie”.
Meanwhile, a former RUC assistant chief constable, who is known as witness 18, told the tribunal that he had ordered Mr Breen and Mr Buchanan not to cross the border on the day they were killed.
However, this evidence was rejected by retired RUC det supt Alan Mains who was chief supt Breen’s staff officer.
Tribunal lawyers have spoken to members of the IRA, one of whom it is understood took part in the operation to murder the two RUC men. It is not known if they will give evidence to a public sitting of the tribunal.
