Seán Doherty (Roscommon politician)

In 1965, Doherty became a member of the Garda Síochána and served as a Detective in Sligo before joining the Special Branch in Dublin in the early 1970s.

[3] At the 1979 Fianna Fáil leadership election, Doherty was a key member of the "gang of five" which supported Charles Haughey's campaign.

The brother of Seán Doherty's wife Maura, Garda Thomas Nangle,[4] was charged with assaulting James McGovern, a native of County Fermanagh, in a public house in December 1981.

On 27 September 1982, hours before the case was due to be heard in the District Court in Dowra, a small village in northwest County Cavan, McGovern was arrested by the Special Branch of the RUC on the basis of entirely false Garda intelligence that he was involved in terrorism.

[5][6][7] This use of Garda/RUC Special Branch liaison, set up under the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, prevented meetings between the Garda Commissioner and the RUC chief constable for almost three years.

[8] After Doherty left office it was revealed in The Irish Times that he had ordered the tapping of three journalists' home telephones.

Seán Doherty died at Letterkenny General Hospital as a result of a brain haemorrhage on 7 June 2005 while on a family holiday in County Donegal.