Berry, Peter (1909–78), civil servant, was born 7 June 1909 at 41 New Street, Killarney, Co. Kerry, the son of Peter Berry, RIC sergeant, and his wife, Ellie Lucy (née Barry). The family later moved to Charleville, Co. Cork, where Berry was educated at the local Christian Brothers’ School. During the late 1920s and 1930s Berry was a champion handball player; he was later vice-president of the Civil Service Handball Club and of the Civil Service Harriers running club, as well as a member of the Grange Golf Club. He was an omnivorous reader from early childhood; the contents of his library ranged from minor late Victorian and Edwardian novelists such as Charles Garvice, Mrs Henry Wood, and Ouida, to Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw (qv).
Career in Justice
In January 1927 Berry joined the Department of Justice as a junior official, cutting his teeth on the Intoxicating Liquor Bill (1927). ‘Endless wearying days’ followed, working on alien administration and reading publications seized by customs officers in order to present formal applications for a ban to the censorship of publications board. (Berry remarked that if there was any rationale behind censorship it was bizarre to appoint a nineteen-year-old boy to spend his time reading salacious literature.) After being appointed private secretary to Stephen A. Roche (qv), secretary of the department, in 1936, Berry compiled two volumes of research on the IRA (1936–40, 1941–7) and a dossier in manuscript form on communist groups. These were privately printed and circulated to senior officials and ministers.
Berry served as private secretary to two successive ministers of justice, Patrick Ruttledge (qv) (1938–9) and Gerald Boland (qv) (1939–41). His abilities were quickly recognised within the understaffed civil service machine. (In 1939 the Department of Justice had fewer than twenty professional administrators.) In 1941 Berry became head of the department's newly formed intelligence division, which coordinated security measures and advised the minister on the issuing of detention orders; during the war he enjoyed daily – even hourly – access to the minister and signed official correspondence dealing with such matters as parole. While his title changed as he advanced up the ranks, he retained this coordinating role until his retirement in January 1971. In political circles Berry came to be recognised as the department's éminence grise in such matters, since he possessed an encyclopaedic knowledge of subversive individuals and organisations; he competed vigorously with military intelligence for control of internal security, and after 1945 succeeded in reasserting the primacy of the Department of Justice while the military were reduced to a peripheral status. The heads of Garda special branch and the Garda security unit S3 reported directly to him; later in his career he became well known for his fondness for electronic devices such as telephone scramblers.
Berry opposed the admission of Jewish refugees to the state before, during, and after the second world war. In a memorandum in 1953 opposing a proposal by Robert Briscoe (qv) for the admission to Ireland of ten Jewish families from the Soviet bloc, he stated that Jewish immigrants were recognised as posing a ‘special problem’ by the departments of Justice, Industry and Commerce, and by External Affairs, and that ‘the alien laws have always been administered less liberally in their case’. Berry asserted that Jews in Ireland, by refusing to assimilate and by acquiring disproportionate wealth and influence, had created widespread anti-Semitic feeling among the Irish people; he also suggested that ‘international Jewry’ was using financial influence to secure preferential treatment for Jewish refugees who were no more deserving than millions of other displaced people. In some cases he adopted what he described as a ‘go-slow policy’ in handling such applications, even when they had been approved by the cabinet (Ir. Times, 3 Jan. 2003).
As assistant secretary of the Department of Justice (1957–61) Berry regularly deputised for the secretary, T. J. Coyne (qv), who suffered long periods of illness. He took a leading role in preparing the state's defence against Gerard Lawless in a case brought before the Council of Europe Sub-Commission (Human Rights Commission) and the International Court of Justice at Strasbourg in 1959, supplying the factual material which provided the basis for the brief developed by the attorney general and the legal adviser to the Department of External Affairs. Lawless was seeking compensation for his detention without trial in the Curragh camp during the IRA border campaign, essentially by arguing that internment violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
Berry was appointed secretary of the Department of Justice in 1961. On 4 October 1963 he visited Stormont to discuss IRA activity with William Craig, Northern Ireland minister of home affairs, and formed the impression that his own contacts with Scotland Yard and the RUC left him better informed on the subject than either Craig or the permanent secretary of the Stormont Ministry of Home Affairs. Despite occasional clashes with Charles Haughey (1925–2006), parliamentary secretary at the Department of Justice (1958–61) and subsequently minister for justice (1961–4), he regarded Haughey as the most capable minister he served under and was impressed by his decisive action against the IRA border campaign.
Berry possessed a sharp sense of propriety and was a stickler for protocol. During his civil service career he quarrelled with several ministers and members of the oireachtas who he believed wished him to turn a blind eye to irregularities in matters of finance (such as the use of state cars for private activities) or the appointment of less-qualified applicants to posts on the grounds of political affiliation. On at least three occasions he took advantage of the protection clause of the treasury rules, reporting a minister's actions to the minister for finance and to the committee of public accounts. Giving oral and written evidence to the Devlin commission of inquiry into the functioning of the public service (1966–9), Berry outlined the predicament of the civil servant pressurised by a superior to acquiesce or become complicit in irregular actions.
In the leftward-leaning political atmosphere of the 1960s Berry increasingly attracted criticism from such commentators as John Healy (qv) (writing as ‘Backbencher’ in the Irish Times). On 20 November 1968 he refused to release secret service fund files to the dáil public accounts committee on the grounds that they contained information of a confidential nature (relating to the allocation of funds in connection with the supervision of a high-level IRA informant by a retired head of special branch). This led to a dáil debate; Berry was irritated that, although his minister, Brian Lenihan (qv) (with whom he was on poor terms), had authorised him to withhold the information, government spokesmen did not defend him against criticisms from the opposition benches.
The arms trials
In mid-August 1969 Berry was appointed to an interdepartmental committee on Northern Ireland, giving him direct access to the taoiseach, Jack Lynch (qv). He subsequently expressed concern that a republican pirate radio station in Belfast was inciting the population of the republic to put pressure on their government to intervene and that delegations of northern nationalists were appealing to government sources to provide them with arms. On 20 August he conveyed a special branch report to his minister, Micheál Ó Moráin (qv), which claimed that an unnamed cabinet minister had met the IRA chief of staff, Cathal Goulding (qv), and a deal had been reached by which the IRA would confine their activities to Northern Ireland in return for being given a free hand in using the republic as base for a cross-border campaign. Berry was then approached by Charles Haughey, at that point minister for finance, to discuss reports of attempted IRA–government contacts; unaware of Haughey's involvement with the proposed arms importation, Berry believed this simply reflected government concern to crack down on IRA activities. Over the following weeks, Berry grew concerned at Garda reports of contacts between known republicans and Captain James Kelly (qv) (d. 2003) of military intelligence.
In order to appreciate subsequent events, it should be borne in mind that Berry believed it contrary to civil service protocol to approach the taoiseach directly unless requested; instead, he reported to his minister, who himself had serious health problems and business commitments. Berry was thus unsure how much of his material had been forwarded to the government and unclear of the exact nature of government policy. Berry and his Garda associates consistently took the view, however, that even if the government as a whole formally decided to ally with the IRA and secretly assist them in their activities north of the border, this would still be illegal and the security forces would be obliged to prevent it.
On 27 September 1969 Berry was taken to Mount Carmel Hospital after a number of momentary paralytic seizures; he was checked for a possible aortic clot, and until June 1970 suspected he might have stomach cancer. On the same day his only son, Peter, received serious injuries in a car crash in Co. Galway, leading to his death more than a year later. Although he did not return to his office until mid-January 1970, Berry remained at the centre of affairs, receiving callers to his hospital room as if it were his office. These included Ó Moráin and senior members of Garda special branch.
On 17 October 1969, according to his later recollection, Berry informed Jack Lynch that Captain James Kelly had promised money to members of the IRA for the purchase of arms. Lynch later claimed he had heard of this only in April 1970, suggesting that Berry (who was drugged and on a nose drip during their conversation) might have retrospectively confused what he meant to say with what he had actually said; Berry specifically stated that this claim by Lynch was mistaken.
On 13 April 1970 Berry apprised Lynch of the suspected involvement of Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney (qv) in the importation of arms. He felt that Lynch had not responded to this news with sufficient urgency. Meanwhile, Berry received word from official sources that a cargo of arms was to be flown into Dublin airport on 21 April; he ordered members of special branch to surround the airport terminal with ‘a ring of steel’ (as he reported to Ó Moráin; O'Brien, 117) and seize the weapons if they arrived. On 18 April he had a phone conversation with Haughey, who asked whether the cargo would be allowed through if it was sent directly to the North; after Berry refused, the shipment was cancelled. Berry decided from this exchange that only individual cabinet ministers were involved (rather than the whole government). He now contacted President Éamon de Valera (qv) and stated his dilemma in general terms; de Valera counselled further dialogue with Lynch. (Berry's daughter Lesley was the daughter-in-law of Máirtín Ó Flatharta (1912–2005), de Valera's secretary.) Analysing his motivation for consulting the president, Berry later concluded that he subconsciously retained lingering doubts about the taoiseach's involvement in the arms conspiracy, and he also felt that by consulting the president, and by telling the taoiseach that he had done so, he would push the latter towards enforcing the rule of law.
During further meetings (21, 29 April) Lynch expressed anger at the course of events but failed to act on Berry's advice to dismiss the ministers immediately. Commentators sympathetic to Lynch later suggested that he had been waiting for a suitable moment to take action, but Berry believed at the time that he intended to allow them to retain their positions if they promised to abstain from such actions in future, and was not mollified by Lynch's promise to protect him from retaliation by the ministers. Lynch finally dismissed Haughey and Blaney after a visit from the leader of the opposition, Liam Cosgrave, who revealed that he had been notified of the involvement of senior ministers in the arms plot by an anonymous source. Berry emphatically denied he had informed Cosgrave or asked anyone to do so, and his denials were supported by Garda investigations. (The source is widely believed to have been a senior garda.) In the debate following the dismissals, Kevin Boland (qv) accused Berry of ‘felon-setting’ northern republicans (i.e., denouncing them so that they would be arrested by the British authorities) and falsely claimed that he ran a private surveillance force within the special branch.
Over the following months, Berry increasingly came to believe that the government was not prosecuting the arms trial defendants with sufficient vigour; he disagreed with its view that Haughey's and Blaney's status as elected representatives should protect them from having their telephones tapped and their correspondence intercepted (as he advised). He also developed suspicions that the government's main concern was to preserve itself from political collapse by soft-pedalling investigation into the arms plot, and even that it might wish him to water down his evidence in the forthcoming arms trial.
As political violence intensified in Northern Ireland, the Berry family home was picketed on 7 July 1970 by Official Sinn Féin supporters (later convicted of threatening behaviour), who claimed ‘Berry-Beria’ had been supplying information to the British police to help to convict Irish republicans; they subsequently put up posters which Berry regarded as a direct incitement to murder him. Garda authorities believed this was part of an orchestrated campaign to discredit Berry's testimony before the arms trial, and that his life was in danger. They extended armed police protection to him and his family and persuaded him to carry a firearm. Afterwards Berry's wife developed a heart condition.
After the prosecution counsel's opening statement in the first arms trial emphasised the centrality of Berry's evidence, he received a written undertaking from the new minister for justice, Desmond O'Malley, that if he were killed or injured as a result of his testimony his family would receive compensation of up to £20,000. Berry gave evidence on the sixth day of the first arms trial (29 September 1970). His testimony was interrupted when a defence counsel criticised Mr Justice Aindrias Ó Caoimh (qv) for allowing Berry to refer to the background of Albert Luykx, one of the defendants. Luykx, a Flemish nationalist, had been a low-level collaborator with the Nazis in his native Belgium during the second world war; in 1969 Berry had certified that he had not been involved in any criminal or subversive activities since arriving in Ireland in 1948. Ironically, Berry thought the government should not have prosecuted Luykx, whom he saw as a naïve catspaw rather than a subversive. The judge declared that this criticism of his conduct prejudiced the trial, discharged the jury, and ordered a new trial. This took place in October; the defendants were acquitted despite the trial judge's statement that either Berry or Haughey had deliberately given false testimony about their 18 April conversation and that, if Berry's account was true, the jury had no option but to convict.
Berry subsequently felt that the prosecution had mishandled both trials; in particular, he believed that his examination by counsel for the state had not been extensive enough to bring out the full seriousness of the situation. In a twelve-page document drawn up for the information of the attorney general in advance of the trials, which has never been released in full but some of the contents of which were summarised in Berry's posthumously published recollections, Berry outlined special branch intelligence about the smuggling of small consignments of arms by the IRA via Dublin in 1969; he claimed that Haughey had been complicit in these activities and suggested that some of these weapons reached Saor Éire, a republican splinter group linked to far-left elements and Dublin criminals, which killed Garda Richard Fallon during a bank raid on 3 April 1970. Berry's view that Saor Éire received weapons in this manner is widely believed to have been erroneous, but it attracted considerable attention when made public in 1980. Berry also thought senior gardaí who could have supported his account should have been called as supporting witnesses.
Last years
On 27 November 1970 Berry informed the government that special branch had received information that Saor Éire was planning to kidnap him as a hostage for the safety of a person awaiting extradition from London for the murder of Garda Fallon (the murder of a garda then carried the death penalty). In response the government drew up plans for the immediate internment of the hard core of Saor Éire militants, estimated to number about fifteen. Berry opposed this, believing it could not be implemented in the time allotted and that the government was largely motivated by the hope of winning support for Fianna Fáil from the large protestant minority in the Donegal–Leitrim constituency, where a by-election was due on 2 December 1970. Berry had repeatedly told the government of his intention to retire as soon as possible; he now informed them that he believed the best way to reduce the pressure on his family and on Garda resources was for him to retire with effect from January 1971. Later he claimed he had received assurances that the government would make up the £10,000 he would suffer by premature retirement, but the government denied this and he received no compensation.
Berry refused to testify before the dáil public accounts committee when it investigated the use of government money for the purchase of arms, having been advised that the government would not release him from the obligations of the Official Secrets Act; however, he appeared before it in a ‘consultative’ role in March 1971 despite ministerial objections. In July 1972 he took an unsuccessful libel action against several newspapers arising from their coverage of the Sinn Féin picket outside his house.
Berry and his wife, Frankie, had two daughters and one son, and the family lived at 6 St Kevin's Park, Dartry, south Dublin. Berry died there of a heart attack on 14 December 1978; he had been ill for some time and had just recovered from a previous heart attack.
Assessment
Critics of Berry would argue that his unbroken service in the Department of Justice was too long, making him overly secretive and susceptible to conspiracy theories. In addition to his treatment of Jewish refugees, the fact that this servant of a catholic state privately declared himself an atheist has given him the reputation of a sinister hypocrite, while his role as investigator of subversive organisations has earned him a reputation in some quarters resembling that of J. Edgar Hoover. Any assessment of this last point should bear in mind both that many of those investigated were indeed engaged in activities dangerous to Irish democracy and involving the actual or threatened use of violence, and that some of his material was used to smear people holding unpopular or questionable but peacefully expressed views. It should also be noted that he consistently refused to inform foreign governments about radical political activities of their nationals in Ireland, declaring ‘the activities of communists, as such, are not contrary to law’ (O'Halpin, 287). In 1969 Berry unsuccessfully advised the Lynch government against engaging in a ‘red scare’ campaign against the Labour Party, reminding them that earlier ‘red scares’ conducted by Sean MacEntee (qv), drawing on Berry's dossiers, had permanently damaged MacEntee's reputation.
Defenders would highlight Berry's devotion to his work, his administrative capabilities, and his determination to maintain the honesty and impartiality (among mainstream parties) of the civil service against potentially corrupting pressures, culminating in his determination to maintain the rule of law and democracy, as he saw them, by his actions during the arms crisis. He was perhaps best summed up by Dr Noel Browne (qv) – hardly a natural sympathiser – who described him as ‘a man of obsessional type, preoccupied with the minutiae of his job, but a man of extraordinary dedication in his way to what he felt were the best interests of his job’ (Dáil Éireann, 25 Nov. 1980).
In 1980 Magill magazine published extensive excerpts from a memoir focused on the arms crisis, constructed four or five years afterwards by Berry on the basis of contemporary notes whose extent remains unclear. (This is sometimes described as ‘the Berry Papers’ or – misleadingly – ‘the Berry diaries’. The account of the arms trial was written first; Berry was working on the story of his early career at the time of his death.) These created a political sensation and remain an indispensable historical source.