THE Irish Government asked to be spared "embarrassment" over its failure to extradite a former Catholic priest turned suspected IRA man wanted over the murders of two Scottish soldiers.

Margaret Thatcher's cabinet was told that Irish ministers wanted the UK to agree Father Patrick Ryan should stand trial in Dublin.

Secret papers, made available for the first time, show the behind-the-scenes discussions going on between the two governments, who were engaged in a furious public row over the affair.

Fr Ryan was wanted in connection with the murders of three off-duty British servicemen in the Netherlands on May 1, 1988.

Two of the men were Scots, 22-year-old John Millar Reid, from Lenzie, and John Baxter, 21, from Glasgow.

Ian Shinner, from Cheshire, was also killed in the atrocities which took place near the German border.

Within hours the IRA had admitted responsibility for the killings which were in apparent retaliation for the slaying of three IRA guerrillas in Gibraltar that March.

By June the Belgian police had arrested Fr Ryan, but following a hunger strike he was sent to Dublin not the UK.

On December 13, the Irish Government announced that he would not be extradited to the UK, amid claims he could not receive a fair trial in Britain.

Mrs Thatcher denounced the Irish decision as a ''great insult to all the people of this country'.

Amid angry scenes in the Commons, she faced criticism from the Labour leader Neil Kinnock who told her that she ''blew'' the possibility of extradition with her ''performance".

Behind the scenes, however, discussions between the two governments were ongoing.

Fr Ryan was discussed at a meeting of the cabinet on December 15.

Ministers were told that former priest had been mentioned when the two sides met at an Anglo-Irish conference the day before.

The UK Government issued a "candid reproof" of the situation, the then NI Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Tom King said.

This was "accepted without bridling" by the Irish contingent, he reported.

The UK Government had also asked the Irish government to review their extradition procedures, he added.

Mr King went on: "As for Fr Ryan, Irish ministers were very much hoping to be spared further embarrassment and strongly favoured a British decision to have Fr Ryan prosecuted in Ireland in accordance with existing extra-territorial jurisdiction provisions since both the British and the Irish Attorney Generals had said there was a case to answer."

In the end Fr Ryan was not extradited to the UK.

In October 1989 the Irish director of Public Prosecutions decided that Fr Ryan should not stand trial.