A former senior garda yesterday told the tribunal about the "crazy" days of IRA activity.
Ex-superintendent Michael Duffy, who retired in 1995 after nearly 40 years of service, also summarised the activities of the Provisionals over a period of years when he served in Co Donegal.
"The eighties and the early nineties were crazy as far as IRA actvity went on," he told the probe of Garda corruption claims.
Dealing with one particular case – a cross-border shooting in Co Fermanagh, when the attempted murder of an UDR soldier ended in the death instead of an IRA attacker – Mr Duffy said at least one of three republican activists involved, later arrested in Co Donegal, had immersed himself in water "to do away with forensic evidence".
"They were very alert to that. Firearms and ammunition were always sent to the ballistic and fingerprint sections but we never got a single print from a firearm or a bullet," he said.
Mr Duffy also told of hearing from the then detective inspector Kevin Lennon – a central figure in the tribunal – about a haul of homemade explosives, suspected of being bomb making material, in an unoccupied house near Donegal town in November 1993.
He said Mr Lennon had asked him "to 'take it (the explosives haul) out' in a manner that would not indicate an informer was working with the guards" but he did not identify the source of the information.
Mr Duffy said he had excluded the detective branch of the Donegal Garda from the operation so that the uniformed branch would discover the explosives.
"I wanted uniformed guards to make the find because they would get the credit for it and it would have been an encouragement for them," he said.
Mr Duffy said he had decided to take the find out of circulation as he "firmly believed that the items were going to cause death or serious damage".
