IRA has no reason to 'rock the boat', says former agent
FORMER undercover agent Martin McGartland, who penetrated the IRA, says he cannot move permanently to Northern Ireland. His former colleagues have not forgotten him, but he says they are now dedicated to money-making rackets.
It may surprise some people, but former undercover agent Martin McGartland now returns regularly to Northern Ireland.
"Over the past three or four years I have been back a lot more than before, unless I go to Ballymurphy, where I was from, there is no problem," he says.
"So many people don't know what I look like now."
But although he greatly missed west Belfast when he left for England in 1991, he will never live here again.
"Nothing would attract me back, even if Sinn Fein said: 'These people can return and are not to be harmed' – I would not believe them."
He notes that he was shot six times during an IRA ceasefire in 1999, and although republicans always denied responsibility he has no doubt PIRA was responsible.
"Even if the group of people I was involved with died tomorrow, their wider family will have heard of me and may still bear a grudge," he adds.
He is proud of the work he did against the IRA and estimates that 50 people are still alive thanks to him; thus the name of his book and the soon to be released film Fifty Dead Men walking. The movie precipitated an international storm recently when starring US actress Rose McGowan said she would have joined the IRA had she grown up in Belfast.
Although the International Monitoring Commission now says the IRA has left terrorism and criminality behind, McGartland is completely unconvinced.
"The IRA is still heavily involved in cigarette smuggling, DVD counterfeiting, racketeering with taxis, livestock and fuel smuggling and VAT and tax fraud, especially in the construction sector," he says.
Copies of the forthcoming film about his life have been sold in west Belfast for some time, even though it has not been released to cinemas yet, he says.
"They call me the scum of the earth but they are happy to profit from me," he adds.
And despite the fact that the fuel fraud business has been worth some 300m a year since the early 1990s, he is adamant that the biggest money spinner for the IRA was always – and still is – tax scams in the building sector.
"There are no overheads, no trucks, few staff and no diesel to buy in construction tax fraud," he says.
But, basing his information on the many sources he still has in Northern Ireland, he says that prosperity has removed the desire for a return to violence: "The good times are here, they have no reason to rock the boat."
Yet he would put money on the idea that dissidents seek permission from the IRA for attacks on security forces across the Province in recent months, and that permission is given for reasons of political leverage.
"There is no doubt Sinn Fein are using dissidents, who are mainly ex-IRA/INLA," he says.
"The IRA is more than capable of closing down any group it wants overnight," he says.
"It could just click its fingers and it would happen with no killing."
He is also convinced that the IRA has retained a reasonable number of weapons.
But he is certain it will not return to all-out violence.
“If the IRA attempt to go down that route again with another bomb people will say ‘enough is enough’. They have had enough of soldiers and police wrecking their houses and now they see jobs, wealth and investment. People don’t want to go back.”
The cost to him has been high; he escaped the IRA when he was unmasked by jumping from a third floor window and was later shot six times in England when in hiding. Relatives have been viciously attacked in retaliation for his actions and he was forced to leave his partner and two children behind.
But he does not regret any of it for a second. “A key reason why the IRA came to the table to negotiate peace was that it knew they were so riddled with informers,” he said.
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Monday 28 May 2012
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