MacLochlainn days ‘litany of failures’ in Brian Stack investigation was repeated after Eddie Fullerton murder

Mr. Stack, chief prison officer at Portlaoise, was attending the national amateur boxing championships at the National Stadium in Dublin on March 25, 1983, when he was approached by a masked man who shot him in the neck.

He died from his injuries on September 29, 1984, at the age of just 49. Despite a a major Garda investigation being launched no-one has ever been help responsible for the murder, which the IRA many years later confirmed was carried out by its members.

A 2007 review of the initial investigation of the murder identified a number of serious failings and shortcomings.

This week the Taoiseach Micheál Martin described March 25, 1985, murder as ‘a very dark day in our country’s history’ and delivered an official State apology to Mr. Stack’s wife Sheila and sons Austin, Kieran and Oliver for failures in the investigation.

The Taoiseach said: “We know now, because of the work of his family, that Brian was targeted and shot by members of the Provisional IRA, an organisation still in possession of all the facts of what happened.

"It is important to put these facts on the record because I know from Brian’s family that they do not want any confusion in the public mind about who was responsible for his killing. Those who shot him, transported the killer and covered for them in the intervening decades are responsible.

“What happened next is why Brian’s family is with us this afternoon and why I am here to offer them an apology on behalf of the Government. It is because Brian and his family, a man who was providing a hugely important service for as chief officer at Portlaoise Prison, at a time of great peril for the State, was badly failed by the investigation into his killing.”

Deputy MacLochlainn described ‘the killing of Brian Stack as absolutely wrong’.

"There can be no equivocation in that regard. No Irish republican would ever try to justify what happened. It was absolutely wrong. I commend Sheila and the Stack family on their campaign for answers and justice,” he said.

The Buncrana TD noted that ‘the litany of failures by An Garda Síochána in the investigation of Brian Stack’...were ‘repeated and even worse in the case of Councillor Eddie Fullerton, whose murder occurred just a short number of years later’.

Mr. Fullerton, a respected Sinn Féin councillor, was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries at his home just outside Buncrana on May 25, 1991.

Deputy MacLochlainn told the Dáil how ‘a key witness had seen those responsible, clearly having burned out the car used and being picked up by another car’ was dismissed by An Garda Síochana when they presented their evidence the following day.

"It was only 12 years later when the witness listened to Eddie Fullerton’s late son, Albert Fullerton, on the radio and reached out to him that the family became aware of this. Key forensic evidence was not dealt with,” he said.

The Donegal TD reminded the Dáil how weapons linked to 19 loyalist murders in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including that of Mr. Fullerton, were uncovered by the RUC in dumps in the Derry area. Some of the guns had been part of a combined loyalist importation in 1987 while others had been stolen from members of the security forces.

"Ballistic evidence – this is shocking – was passed over by the RUC on the killing of another republican. The same gun used in that killing was used to kill Eddie Fullerton. There were four key suspects, but it would take a decade before An Garda Síochána asked for them to be questioned.

"We now know that one of the suspects went on to be responsible for the massacres in Castlerock and Greysteel. He was a British military agent and a sectarian serial killer. That is what happens when there is a failure to follow the evidence, interview witnesses or have any sort of passion for this. The Fullerton family repeatedly had to have meetings with the Taoiseach’s predecessor, Bertie Ahern, and with senior gardaí,” he said.

Deputy MacLochlainn was referring in part of damning revelations in an exhaustive Police Ombudsman report that was published in 2022 and which examined the RUC handling of attacks by the UDA/UFF which resulted in 19 murders and multiple attempted murders in the NW between 1989 and 1993.

That reported stated: “On April 8, 1993, police carried out a search at Downhill, near Castlerock, County Derry/Londonderry and recovered a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver, Radom 9mm pistol, and Walther P5 pistol. Forensic examinations confirmed that all three weapons had been used in the Castlerock murders [of Robert Dalrymple, James Kelly, James McKenna, and Noel O’Kane] on March 25, 1993.

“The Smith and Wesson revolver had been previously used in the murders of Eddie Fullerton and Thomas Donaghy, and the attempted murder of James McCorriston. It had originally been a Personal Protection Weapon (PPW) which was stolen from the home of a former police officer in Garvagh in February 1988.”

Speaking in the Dáil this week Deputy MacLochlainn said he hoped there will be ‘a State apology for the family of Councillor Eddie Fullerton’.