Drew Harris: Interception of New IRA bomb a 'real positive' for cross-border policing

Former Garda Commissioner Drew Harris told the MacGill Summer School in Glenties that the discovery of a bomb, believed to have been the property of the New IRA, in recent days was a “real positive” about cross-border policing cooperation. A viable device was discovered in a car in Monaghan, which had travelled from Dublin and was understood to be heading in the direction of Derry. Harris, who stepped down as Garda Commissioner last September, was in Glenties on Saturday and took part in a segment titled ‘Organised Crime & Transnational Disorder’ at the summer school in the Highlands Hotel. "I was somewhat shocked, I have to say. News like this is always shocking,” he told host Barry Cummins, a national security and crime journalist and author. "At a time, 30 years ago, it might have made the inner pages, but now it's so unusual that genuinely people were very surprised and shocked, taken aback. "On the other side of that, I'm pleased to see that obviously An Garda Síochána, the PSNI are obviously still have a thought that there is a threat and that they have to actually prevent these attacks and that they're not being complacent.” Harris said that the interception of the device was the mark of a “very positive policing operation”. He said: “Undoubtedly, major damage or terrible injury, indeed death has been avoided so that's always a positive and that's a good thing for us. "The longer we can get from this extreme violence, the less that we have of it, then that is a public good. It's a real positive for An Garda Síochána and I hope then it's a real positive also then about cooperation, policing cooperation across the border.” A car was intercepted in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan last Wednesday and was carrying what has been described as “a significant explosive device”. It is believed that the device was bound for Derry. A timing unit, a detonator and Semtex were found and the Defence Force’s explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) team was called in to assist. “It could have potentially caused significant damage,” the current Garda Commissioner, Justin Kelly, said. Two people have been charged, including Isobella Perrie Sullivan, a law student who spent several years living in Letterkenny and studying at ATU Donegal. Perrie Sullivan, a 25-year-old with an address in Clane, Co Kildare, appeared before a special sitting of Trim District Court on Friday evening. Perrie Sullivan was remanded in custody with consent to bail. Judge Raymond Finnegan granted bail provided that an independent surety of €15,000 was proferred and that she surrendered her passport. Her solicitor, Mr Gavin Booth, told the court that Perrie Sullivan’s family were “devastated” and said she was previous a member of a “political group” and had spent some time in Syria. However, Mr Booth said that Perrie Sullivan had since moved away from politics and was focussing her time on studying to be a barrister. On Saturday night, Simon O’Donovan (44) appeared before a late-night sitting of the Special Criminal Court. He was charged with being in possession of an explosive substance, to wit an improvised device, at St Lawrence Road, Chapleizod, Dublin 10, on July 22. O’Donova, of Sperrin Road, Dublin 12, represented himself in court and made a bail application, but he was remanded in custody. During the same segment at the MacGill Summer School, Allison Morris, an award winning crime and security correspondent now working with the Belfast Telegraph, said the find was “quite shocking.” "At the height of our conflict and our trouble, someone being caught with an under-car bomb in their car wouldn't have made the headlines,” Ms Morris said. “It would have been on page 8 or 9 of the paper, because much more serious things would have been happening, but in the current context, where we are now, it's quite shocking. "It's shocking because she had a bomb, which is clearly high-grade explosives. It was in a lunchbox, this kind of bomb that you would have seen the IRA planting underneath the cars of police officers and prison officers during the conflict, in a hold-all in the back of a car that was stopped in Carrickmacross. “This is the part I find shocking: It's a 25-year-old woman from Dublin. . . These are the children of the ceasefire. The children who should know nothing about our troubled past. There is an element - just as you see the Tyson Furys, the Daniel Kinihans, living their big luxurious lifestyle in Dubai - that is a recruitment tool to get young kids into their business to sell drugs for them. I think that there's a romanticising of our conflict, which is being used to groom very young people into those dissident organisations - and believe me, they're tiny.” Ms Morris said that someone in Ireland with the capability of making such a device would now be a concern to security agencies on both sides of the border. "That viable bomb was in the back of that car for that time before it was intercepted,” she said. “They'll need to find out where that batch came from. Is there more? Where is it? Whose hands is that in? “The longer term conversation is a conversation about how our young people are still being sucked into that element of the idea of republicanism. I think that political republicanism and children being and young people being politicised about the future of their island and getting involved in the constitutional conversation and all of that is probably at a height that I've never seen in my life. “That is a really healthy way for a young person to express the republicanism in their views., but how are young people still getting sucked into this? “We see it on the streets of Derry and sometimes in Belfast at certain times of the year. We know that the people who were arrested in connection with the murder of Lyra McKee a few years ago in 2019, most of them were teenagers at the time as well.”