Fear stalked the Border area and bodies were regularly dumped along roadsides in the mid-1970s, an Oireachtas all-party body heard yesterday.
The Justice Sub-Committee is into its second week of hearings on the Barron Report into the 1976 murder of Dundalk forestry worker Seamus Ludlow.
Mr Ludlow (47) who had no links to paramilitary groups, was shot dead as he returned home from a night out.
The Barron report said the RUC told gardaí in 1979 that it believed four named loyalists were involved in his killing, but this information was not pursued by the Garda at the time.
Former Co Louth TD Brendan McGahon yesterday admitted that he was wrong to blame the IRA for the murder, during a radio interview with RTÉ broadcaster Pat Kenny in 1993, years after the killing.
“I was wrong, but only hindsight has proven me wrong,” he told sub-committee members.
The ex-Fine Gael TD said he was given the information at the time by a garda, but he couldn’t remember his name yesterday.
He also said he knew the Ludlow family well and Seamus had carried out gardening work for him at his house.
He recalled that the time of the murder was a dreadful period in the Border area.
“There was fear all around, on both sides of the Border,” he said.
Earlier, former Detective Superintendent John Courtney said he was disappointed that four loyalists identified by the RUC to gardaí weren’t questioned by detectives in the Republic.
He repeated his claims in the Barron report, that Detective Sergeant Dan Boyle told him in 1979 that former Garda Commissioner Larry Wren had advised senior officers that no further action should be taken in the case.
The sub-committee, which heard calls for an independent statutory inquiry from Ludlow family members last week, is expected to report to the government before the end of March.