A report (rather long, 500 pages) has been published about police corruption in Ireland. Basically, a tribunal found that a small group of Gardai (police) had faked a number of finds of IRA explosives.

The report is long and detailed and carefully written. However, here is a choice quote from the summary:

14.36. A conflicting account was given by Ms. McGlinchey to the Carty inquiry and to the Tribunal. She said that far from being a subversive explosive dump, it had been assembled and put in the house by her with the help of some of her friends and also on the instructions of Detective Garda McMahon and, in fact, Detective Garda McMahon had assisted in choosing the location of the find and assembling the material. She recounted how she, along with Detective Garda McMahon, brought Detective Inspector Lennon down to see the material in the belief that he, Detective Inspector Lennon, did not know about it, but in doing so, she became aware of the fact that he did.

14.37. The Tribunal has at all times been aware of the fact that Ms. McGlinchey?s word is not to be trusted and it carried out its enquiries into the circumstances of this ?find? independently of her account. In the course of the inquiry, disturbing matters came to light. It was found that what was believed to have been homemade explosive manufactured from ground fertiliser was not in fact an explosive. It was an animal feed that is commonly called urea. Notwithstanding this fact, a report was forwarded from Ballyshannon to Garda Headquarters describing the material as ?indeed explosive? and claiming that this information had become available as a result of a test carried out by an ordnance officer in Finner Camp. The Tribunal investigation revealed that no such report had been issued from Finner Camp and no such test had been carried out. It is possible that some type of informal test may have been done on the material, but no formal report ever issued to the Garda? which would enable them to so report to Crime & Security. If a formal test had been done, it would not have resulted in a finding that the material was an explosive.

The report goes on and on. There is much worse than that (for example, the ‘Leprechaun from the Ould Sod’ incident in New York, section 10.09).