Updated 22.45

A NEW GARDA whistleblower is “taking a grave risk” by presenting a number of allegations to the interim confidential recipient, the Dáil has heard.

Independent TD Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan told the Dáil that a garda, who he described as “a hero”, is today presenting information to the interim confidential recipient, retired judge Patrick McMahon.

“He has had to go public because at his local garda station the word is that these are the whistleblowers or ‘snitches’ as is being used by many people,” Flanagan told the Dáil.

The Roscommon-South Leitrim TD detailed a series of allegations which he said “are very serious”.

The allegations he detailed in the Dáil include the cover-up of an original file that was “stolen” and details of it removed form the Pulse system as well a a “threat” from a garda to an accused person to plead guilty on the day of a court case.

Flanagan also detailed other claims where “heroin dealing and the Garda Siochána are being connected”.

He said there was a “systematic and orchestrated effort by high ranking garda officers” to  ”induce and coerce citizens with no previous convictions to buy drugs from drug dealers” and to put them “in personal danger” by getting them to sell drugs to undercover gardaí  ”without making any profit thus boosting crime detection figures”.

He called for “overnight legislation” so that serving members of the gardaí can make complaints to the Garda Ombudsman.

“This man is taking a grave risk today,” Flanagan said.

Responding for the government, Education Minister Ruairí Quinn said that systems will be put in place so that the “kind of thing you are describing today” won’t happen again.

Flanagan said that the garda is a hero. “I wish I knew more heroes like him… I hope they’ll shake his hand and not tie a knot in a rat’s tail and put it around his door.”

Earlier, Quinn said that the publication of the Guerin report into allegations that gardaí mishandled a number of serious allegations will provide “a lot more clarity” on events over the last 24 hours and the resignation of Justice Minister Alan Shatter.

Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin queried the “steadfast support” that the Labour party had given to Shatter throughout the recent controversies and asked when the Tánaiste knew about the minister’s departure.

Quinn said that Eamon Gilmore was informed “mid-afternoon yesterday” that Shatter had tendered his resignation.

He rejected suggestions that Gilmore was “blindsided in some way” by the Taoiseach insisting the pair were “in contact on a number of occasions right through yesterday”.

Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Féin’s deputy leader, said she found it “extraordinary” that Gilmore has absented himself from the Dáil today to launch Lorraine Higgins’s European election campaign in Galway.

She said that Shatter resigned “to save Fine Gael and Labour’s bacon”.

Quinn also told the Dáil that the Cooke report into allegations that the headquarters of the Garda Ombudsman were bugged will be published “imminently”.

Originally posted 13.09

Ming: I was followed by an unmarked Garda car… and so was John Wilson