A former garda commissioner has rejected evidence given to the Smithwick Tribunal by a retired senior officer that a phone call to a leading republican telling him to dispose of forged passports just before a garda search was recorded and had since disappeared.
Pat Byrne said the tape recording of the conversation and a transcript of what was said were not missing because they did not exist.
However, the tribunal had earlier been told by former inspector Dan Prenty, who was based in Dundalk, that he was summoned to the Crime and Security offices within Garda Headquarters to listen to a taped conversation.
He was brought there to try and identify a voice on the phone call to a very senior republican where he was warned to get rid of the package because his home was to be raided by gardaí the following day.
Mr Prenty said he could not identify the voice. When the man's house was raided nothing was found.
"No tape was listened to. No tape existed," Mr Byrne told the tribunal today.
Judge Smithwick interjected and asked the witness did former inspector Prenty then imagine the whole thing.
"That tape has now disappeared and the transcript has also disappeared from the file in Crime and Security. Is that not a fact?" asked the judge.
"That is not a fact," replied the former garda commissioner. He said he would have remembered if such a tape existed and so would other people in that branch.
The judge then asked was there a gap in the garda file "from which the transcript was removed?", to which the witness replied that it was of very serious concern "to suggest that information went from Crime and Security in Headquarters."
If there had been such an intercept, the former garda commissioner said he would have ordered a "lock down of Garda HQ" and it would have resulted in an immediate major investigation.
The target of the intercept was a very high-profile individual and he had been the subject of much investigation not only by the gardaí but by other security organisations.
Mr Byrne said it would be "extraordinary knowing this person that he would allow someone ring him up on his phone and tip him off. He was no fool."
Senior counsel for the tribunal, Justin Dillon, pointed out that all the intercepts are gone from Crime and Security offices for the week around the time Dan Prenty said it had happened.
The Smithwick Tribunal is investigating claims that a garda or gardaí colluded with the IRA in the murder of two senior RUC officers.
Chief Supt Harry Breen and Supt Bob Buchanan died in an ambush shortly after leaving a meeting in Dundalk Garda Station in March 1989.
