Belfast man launches legal challenge against top Garda appointment

A Belfast man is launching legal proceedings in Dublin to try to stop the deputy chief constable of the Northern Ireland police becoming head of the Garda in Ireland.

Lawyers for Ciarán MacAirt are seeking a judicial review of the appointment, which would see someone who is likely to have worked with British intelligence in Northern Ireland take over the Republic’s police and security.

They will argue that the appointment of Drew Harris is “wildly inappropriate” and an “astonishing breach of Irish national security”.

MacAirt’s grandmother Kathleen Irvine was one of 15 people killed by loyalists in the bombing of McGurk’s Bar in Belfast in 1971. The attack was one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles and the families of those who died have long campaigned for a fresh inquest.

Harris is a former Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officer and his father, Alwyn, also an officer, was killed by an IRA bomb in 1989.

In June, Ireland’s justice minister, Charlie Flanagan, defended the appointment of Harris to his new role.

He said he was “far from an outsider”, describing Harris as a man with a “wealth of experience and knowledge not only in terms of policing in Northern Ireland but in international policing”.

He also said Harris’s long relationship with the Garda Síochána “will stand him in very good stead” to see through reforms in the Irish police service.

MacAirt claims Harris’s roles in the RUC and Police Service of Northern Ireland mean he lacks the independence required for the job.

He has been campaigning for a new inquiry into the bombing of the Belfast pub amid claims that British security forces helped the Ulster Volunteer Force carry out the attack. MacAirt has accused Harris of preventing victims’ families from getting to the truth, in his role as head of the PSNI’s historical inquiries team.

He was appointed to the Garda role after an “international selection process” by the Public Appointments Service, on behalf of the policing authority.