Dr. Alasdair McDonnell:

I will be brief and keep it simple. I congratulate Ms Urwin on her presentation, which brought back memories for me. I was a student the evening the bomb went off in Dublin and I know how scary and dangerous it was and how bewildered people were at the time. I would commit to doing anything to ensure they get justice, which I will come to shortly. I congratulate Ms Cadwallader on the success of the book because it has been a tremendous asset to many of us in tying together the threads of collusion that were running through many events. While the Historical Enquiries Team, HET, had done some useful individual work, it took Ms Cadwallader to pull it all together in her book. I have found it immensely useful.

I want to put on the record that from my perspective, surviving victims, and by that I mean the injured, and surviving relatives of the innocent people who were killed, need and deserve the truth. There is an onus on us all, whether we are operating in the North or in the South, and particularly those of us in public life, to ensure the truth is delivered. We have to do all we can in that regard. Funding for Justice for the Forgotten is a small aspect of that and I urge colleagues on the committee to support any effort that can be made to ensure some funding is given to this group to sustain it because it is doing a very useful job, fulfilling a very useful role and it should not be allowed reach a point where it cannot function.

There is a great deal of information to be absorbed and dealt with and I am grateful to the two people who presented to the committee for informing and educating us across the entire victims and survivors spectrum.