Speaking to the Sunday Tribune, O'Toole said she believed that private operatives who could obtain intelligence within ethnic communities could form a vital part of future policing structure here. She added that she would like to see regular 'sworn' members of the force developing a range of specialist language and cultural skills in Chinese, Arabic and west African languages, for instance. O'Toole said it was essential that gardai could speak the languages of new ethnic groupings in Irish society to encourage them to report crimes within and against their communities.

O'Toole, a former commissioner of the Boston police force, said that centrally controlled anti-terror intelligence units were not sufficient on their own to obtain intelligence against fundamentalist groups. "It is very often the guy on the street corner who tells the officer he's heard something. It isn't always the guy in the main national headquarters who can get access to the information that is at street level."

O'Toole's comments were echoed by a leading expert in police instruction and counter terrorism, Joe King, senior lecturer at John Jay Police College, New York. King, an FBI officer for 35 years, who worked with gardai in detecting and monitoring IRA members, said he believed the force was "well clued in" but that there was no apparent prioritisation at a political level here of the threat of terror attacks by Islamic extremists.

"Generally, from talking with Irish gardai, there is no real understanding of the seriousness of international terror, " he said. "Irish people and their public representatives are far more interested in the Polish plumber who might take their job rather than the Islamic terrorist living just a few hundred miles away in the UK. They see the logic in being worried while on holiday, after the Madrid bombs for instance, but they are fairly oblivious to the risk of an attack here."

However, King noted that Ireland was regarded within official intelligence circles as an unlikely terror target. "It is fair to say that an ASU (active service unit) needs a structure to be effective. They need safe houses; access to equipment; and logistical support. That level of support doesn't seem to be present in Ireland. That said, Islamic terror cells as we understand them now do not operate like traditional terror units, insofar as they can be volatile and unpredictable and operate without any central command structure. One or two people can do a lot of damage if they want to."

Recently declassified US state department documents, obtained by RTE, showed that six separate terrorist groups were operating in Ireland as recently as 2003, including al-Qaeda.