Ulster Unionist Justice Spokesperson Doug Beattie MC MLA has called for an urgent inquiry into claims by a Fianna Fail TD that the Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA between 1969 and 1972 was a Garda agent.

Doug Beattie MC MLA said:

“The Ulster Unionist Party has consistently highlighted the need for Dublin to account for the role played by the Republic of Ireland during the Troubles. For decades its territory provided a safe haven for the IRA, a storehouse for huge amounts of illegal weaponry, terrorist training camps and a base from which to launch numerous attacks across the border into Northern Ireland resulting in the death and injury of many hundreds of UK citizens. And to that list we must add the refusal of successive Dublin Governments to extradite wanted terrorist suspects to the UK.  

“Dublin has been very quick in the past to demand all kinds of inquiries and information from London when claims are made about the role of the British Army and RUC during the Troubles. Now is the time for it to reciprocate and reveal just what was going on with regard to Garda agents in the ranks of the Provisional IRA at the outbreak of the Troubles.  

“The claim by Fianna Fail TD Sean Haughey that the IRA Chief of Staff in the early 1970s  - Sean McStoifan - was a Garda agent and informer, is stunning in its implications and must be fully investigated as a matter of urgency. 

“This claim cannot be dismissed as the work of some Walter Mitty fantasist or the famed ‘British securocrats.’  It comes from a Fianna Fail TD and the son of a former Taoiseach, who was himself a central figure in the 1970 Arms trial which rocked the Lynch Government to its very core.  

“The implications are huge. We have the son of Charlie Haughey, and a member of the current governing party in the Irish Republic stating that the founder of the Provisional IRA and that organisation’s Chief of Staff was an agent of the Garda. 

“Sean McStoifan was in charge of the IRA in 1972 when attacks on civilians in the Abercorn restaurant, Claudy and Bloody Friday took place. That same year he also led IRA delegations in talks with British Government representatives, the most well known being the talks in London in July 1972 where the IRA delegation also included Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.   

“If Sean Haughey is correct and the man leading the Provisional IRA in the early years of the Troubles was indeed a Garda agent, then the Republic’s Government must act without delay to set up an Inquiry as to what the Garda – and the Dublin Government – knew about the activities of the IRA and when they knew it, so we can establish how many innocent lives may have been lost because of the activities of a Garda agent at the head of the Provisional IRA. These allegations have massive implications.”