Ms Amanda Fullerton:

I would like to enlighten the committee on the question of the information that has been buried. I will start with the present day. Why is the Garda Commissioner refusing to co-operate with the inquiry of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland? All of the documentation and anything relevant to the ombudsman's investigation is buried. That sets the context, 25 years after the murder. From the outset, the Garda authorities have consistently buried any line of inquiry that has been pushed to them from the RUC side. We would never have known this if the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Dr. Michael Maguire, had not set about unravelling all the bits of information coming his way and seriously and earnestly investigating these lines of inquiry. Every time something has been provided by the RUC during the years, there has been no response from the Garda in the South. An Garda Síochána has been extremely reluctant to communicate with the Fullerton family. A reinvestigation that commenced in 2004 reported in an interim way in 2006. The document with which we were presented on that day was unacceptable. We were told not to make it public at the time, but I am more than happy to table it and make it public now. It was shambolic. The key witness statement was totally disregarded.

On the night of the murder, a member of the media who was well versed on all of the issues in Northern Ireland and who reported on them witnessed something that the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland now defines as triable and indictable. That was completely disregarded. It stirred enough interest on the day of the murder that he was visited by a chief superintendent on the RUC side and the Garda side. He was interviewed in a car parked outside his home. That information was never followed up. We were never told about it. On the night of the murder, this witness saw three men at the scene where the getaway car was burned out. He saw them being picked up and driven away. We did not know about this until he approached my family in 2003 when he informed my brother of what he had seen. He has since provided seven statements for various people, including in the Garda in its reinvestigation, our legal team and the ombudsman's inquiry. Having interviewed this witness and applied the correct protocol for witness statement-taking, the ombudsman is satisfied that he did see what he says he saw on the night of the murder. The ombudsman's investigation has also identified a member of the RUC who was at the scene of the burned-out car and corroborates what the witness has said about what happened on the night in question. That is just one small example.

The ombudsman unveiled how in 1991 a team of gardaí travelled to the North to meet the RUC team to be informed at a formal meeting in a police station in the North. I know the name of the police station. I am very concerned about saying too much because there is an ongoing and live wider investigation which I do not want to compromise. At that meeting, the ballistics relating to the murder of Eddie Fullerton were discussed and linked to a recent murder in the North at the time. That was never followed through. There were suspects and arrests relating to that murder.

This all happened prior to the inquest. The inquest was then called at short notice on 19 December 1991. One member of my family was contacted by the Garda and that member had the responsibility of gathering us into a community hospital. There were no witnesses that I can remember at that inquest. We had never suffered a murder like this before. We were an ordinary family from Donegal and we did not realise we could have legal representation. We did not realise that the inquest should have been about much more than the injuries sustained by Eddie Fullerton. We did not realise about the ballistics or the significant witness statements, etc. That is another example of serious information being buried.

The number of statements taken at the time of my father's murder was minimal and they were confined largely to family and others. I think there were approximately 120 statements until the re-investigation, when the number went up again. There was nothing meaningful ever taken. On record, that key witness statement amounted to 300 words and he does not remember signing it.

We have been told time and again about the RUC informing the Garda about significant information it had about potential suspects for the murder, and with good reason. That seems to have fallen into a black hole. There is no record of any kind of follow-up. In 1993, after a high-level atrocity, a significant witness came forward. There was a high-level meeting between the RUC and the Garda Síochána and the names of suspects were again passed over. That was not followed up. The important aspect of that was that we, specifically as a family, had heard in the media about this potential link and my mother went to the Garda superintendent and asked for those suspects to be interviewed. We were told in a follow-up meeting by a detective that those witnesses had been questioned and they had nothing to do with anything. She was told it would be in her best interests not to pursue the matter. We know that those suspects were never questioned about Eddie Fullerton's murder.

Going back to 2013, the ombudsman again uncovered a significant new line of inquiry, which was again furnished through the PSNI to the Garda. We have had no contact from the Garda and even then the Garda has indicated it will not co-operate with the police ombudsman investigation. The lack of co-operation by the Garda and the lack of willingness to meet the ombudsman's team provides verification for our family and vindicates everything we have said all along. The Garda in this State, for some reason, is not interested in investigating Eddie Fullerton's assassination.