Garda Sean Dorris on his last day of service at Belturbet Garda Station.

Garda calls time on remarkable career

Shutting gates benchmarked memorable moments in Garda Sean Dorris' near 40 years of service

An unusual coincidence of shutting gates has benchmarked memorable moments in Sean Dorris' near 40-year career working with An Garda Síochána. Sean retired from the job last month.

One of those earliest snapshots is of Sean in Naas not long after graduating from Templemore in November 1982.

In the small hours of February 9, 1983, he was sent to a rural Kildare farmyard where a theft had taken place the evening before. Three men - all armed and wearing masks - had entered a house and made off with valuable property, leaving behind them a demand for £2 million.

"I was told by the old Sergeant of the day to 'bundle my kit' and get out to Ballymany Stud, and to stay at the gate and not let anyone in. When I asked 'what's wrong?' he told me Shergar had been kidnapped. So off I went to Ballymany not knowing whether Shergar was man, woman or child."

It was claimed subsequently that the IRA stole the Aga Khan's retired thoroughbred.

"When I arrived, the world's press had already gathered. At some stage they got footage of me shutting the gate behind me. That's the bit used in all archive material if Shergar's name crops up, with the caption often, the one they wanted, of someone 'closing the gate after the horse had bolted'," recalls Sean, his trademark moustache hiding a wry smile.

No arrests were ever made, but belief is Shergar's body is buried near Aughnasheelin, Co Leitrim.

Sean would have reason to traverse that same terrain in December 1983 as part of a large contingent tasked with searching Drumcromin Wood, at Derrada, where an IRA gang were holding Don Tidey, managing director of the Quinnsworth supermarket chain.

Sean transferred to Cavan-Monaghan at a time when many were leaving the Border region, such was a danger posed to policing personnel on both sides during the height of the conflict in Northern Ireland.

"Unfortunately lives were lost," he says of the shootout that occurred at Derrada. "Young Garda Gary Sheehan from Carrickmacross and Private Patrick Kelly from Westmeath. It was a very sad day for the job, and for society in general."

More recently, Sean, native of Ballinalee in neighbouring Co Longford, made history by being the last garda to close the gate when Redhills' garda station was shut following Ministerial directive in November 2013.

Sean had arrived in Redhills in the last days of August 1987, explaining: "Policing back then was either shank's mare or a bicycle. You'd often use your own car to do calls. There was no other way."

At the time he was unaware of the fascinating literary position the station would soon attract when its former resident, Shane Connaughton, autobiographically accounted his early life as a sergeant’s son in the 1989 novel 'A Border Station', and later in the acclaimed sequel 'Married Quarters' (2017).

Over the years Shane and Sean formed a close relationship, the latter being on hand to police proceedings when the writer's first two books - The Playboys and The Run of the Country - were filmed in Redhills in 1991 and 1994.

Redhills suited Sean, and Sean suited Redhills. "I got a very basic brief for my job when I first arrived in Redhills, from my peers at the time, and that was to go out there and live with the people. I think, as a policeman then, and even still, to live with the people, to get to know them, and for them to get to know you, life is so much easier."

After the Redhills station closed, Sean was assigned to Belturbet.

"The job has been a way of life for me. It's a vocation. There are people who are 40 and 45 years’ old today who have only ever known me as a guard. I've seen three and four generations of families grow up during my service. Teenagers, when I first came, some of them are now grandparents."

He adds "of course" when asked if he'll miss the job. "I'm sure I will. But I'll have to go first to fully realise that."