Eamon Broy

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Eamon Broy was a commissioner for the Garda Síochána from February 1933 to June 1938 ^[1].

During the Irish War of Independence (1919 - 1921) Broy was member of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. He was, in fact, a double agent, working inside G Division (the intelligence branch of the Dublin Metropolitan Police) for Michael Collins, to whom he passed valuable intelligence throughout the conflict. ^{[citation needed]}

Neil Jordan's film Michael Collins (1996) inaccurately depicts Broy (played by actor Stephen Rea) as having been discovered, tortured and killed by the British. In addition, G Division was based not in Dublin Castle (as shown in the film) but in Marlborough Street. Collins had a different agent in the Castle, David Nelligan. ^{[citation needed]}

In 1934 Broy oversaw the creation of the unit known officially as "The Auxiliary Special Branch" and unoffically as "TheBroy Harriers, recruited mainly from among former IRA members and used first against the Fascist Blueshirts and later against its members' own former comrades in arms of the IRA itself.

The nickname persisted into the 1940's, though Broy himself was no longer in command, and for the bodies tageted by the unit was a highly-abusive term (as it still is in the wrtings of radical Irish Republican groups up to the present).

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