Garda in ‘IRA-link tribunal’ gets costs

A CONTROVERSIAL witness at the Smithwick Tribunal into claims of Garda collusion with the IRA will get almost all his legal costs, it has been reported.

The inquiry has decided that taxpayers will pick up the bill incurred by former detective garda Owen Corrigan, according to RTÉ’s This Week programme.

The tribunal was set up in 2005 to investigate alleged collusion in the killing of two RUC officers, Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan, who were shot dead in an IRA ambush in South Armagh in 1989.

There had been a proposal that the taxpayer should not pay costs to Mr Corrigan but, in documents This Week says it has seen, it has now apparently rejected the proposal. In

‘Evasive, vague and inconsistent’

his final report last November, the presiding judge, Mr Justice Peter Smithwick, had described Mr Corrigan as evasive, vague, inconsistent, self- serving and not credible in his evidence.

Last January, the tribunal discussed Mr Corrigan’s cost application at a special meeting, in which it emerged that tribunal representatives had furnished his legal team with the knowledge that it was ‘not minded’ to pay his costs.

At that meeting, Justin Dillon, the tribunal’s senior counsel, mentioned Mr Corrigan’s ‘ point- blank and unambiguous refusal’ to provide full details to the tribunal in relation to his financial affairs, it was reported.

Mr Corrigan had told the tribunal that there was no chance he was going to hand them over bank details. The January meeting heard how the tribunal had written to Mr Corrigan saying that as a consequence of his failure, it had been proposed that ‘he shall not have the costs borne by the taxpayer’.

However, the tribunal’s proposal prompted Mr Corrigan’s legal team to argue that if the tribunal had, in effect, already made up its mind at that time to deny him costs, it would be indicative of bias. Lawyers for Mr Corrigan also said they might take a case to the High Court.

Mr Justice Smithwick said at that time that no decision had been made, or set in stone, relating to Mr Corrigan’s costs, despite the proposal contained in correspondence.

He has now decided to award most of Mr Corrigan’s costs.

According to confidential tribunal correspondence reported by RTÉ’s This Week, Mr Justice Smithwick authorised the payment of most of Mr Corrigan’s legal costs in a formal ‘Order for Costs’, signed off by Derek Mills, Registrar of the Tribunal on April 7. It authorised that the State should cover the costs of Mr Corrigan’s solicitor and two barristers.

The cost falls on the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

The costs order covers the vast majority of Mr Corrigan’s legal and related costs since he was granted legal representation by the tribunal on October 16, 2006. However, the tribunal has decided that it would not authorise the payment of costs relating to one discovery order, which the tribunal sought in May 2013.

On the whole, Mr Justice Smithwick said he believed there had been collusion between gardaí and the IRA linked to the killing of the two RUC officers. However, the judge said he could not find any credible information to link any of the named gardaí who came to the tribunal’s attention, including Mr Corrigan, to any act of collusion with the IRA.