Mr. Austin Stack:

I will deal with Senator Feighan's question first, which is similar to one asked of me by Deputy Breathnach and relates to public inquiries into the mismanagement of some cases. There has been much mismanagement of the investigations of cases, in particular those from 1980 to 1985. Such mismanagement centres around issues such as critical witnesses not being questioned and evidence going missing, which seem to go hand in hand in this regard. There were very similar issues involving witnesses not being questioned and evidence going missing in the case of my father, that of Mr. Kelly's father, and other cases involving people in our group. We are quite forthright about looking for a public inquiry in that regard. It is not simply explained by poor Garda practices at the time, although that is what we have been told. We were told the fingerprint archive in Santry was flooded and fingerprints were washed away. We then asked the Garda if it had the original material evidence off which the fingerprints were taken and were told it had been lost. That is the sort of barrier that has been put in our way.

If one looks for the log book of where that evidence went and who the last person to have it was, one is told the Garda has the log book and knows where it last was but it is not where it is supposed to be. That is not down to poor Garda practice at the time. Our group believes there was something untoward going on. We believe it is confined to a very specific period of time. In 2015, when I last gave evidence before the committee, I pointed out that in his book Deputy Ferris thanked certain members of the Prison Service in particular for help they gave him. That is the sort of thing with which we are faced. There was a very small minority within the Garda Síochána and the Prison Service who aided and abetted the IRA at the time. We need to tease those matters out in a full public inquiry.

Deputy Breathnach asked what form a victim-centred peace process or true recovery process would take. I have spoken to many people on that issue and discussed it with the leader of the Provisional movement, Deputy Adams. He was quite adamant that there had to be amnesties at the start of the process or else he could not bring his people on board. I was quite forthright with him that the victims are prepared to enter into informal justice and truth recovery if the process is done right. There should be a commission attended by the victims and the perpetrators. There would be privilege over what is said therein and one could not be charged or prosecuted over what is divulged. At the end of the process, if the families felt they had been dealt with in a truthful and honest fashion, they could then recommend that there be an amnesty. When we tried to do an informal process, I had to bring my family with me on it because we were kind of split as a family. I said to Deputy Adams at the start of the process that if at the end of the process my family felt we had been dealt with in a 100% truthful fashion, we would be prepared to state that we did not want prosecutions to result.

We went into that process and were not dealt with in an honest fashion. We were told about 70% of the truth. The 30% we were not told involved the sanctioning of the operation and we could not be told about it because it leads back to quite senior people in Sinn Féin. My view on this is quite simple. A victim-centred process allows the victim and perpetrator to sit down to discuss what has happened and to come to an arrangement that would help aid reconciliation and the healing process. If the victims feel they have been told the truth, they can recommend to the commission that there be an amnesty or no charges. That is a very fair proposal. There can be no prosecutions about what is held within the process.

Deputy Breathnach asked about there being little incentive to tell the truth. From the research I conducted, and focus groups in particular, it was evident that people were very concerned about truth and felt that the former terrorists would have very little incentive to tell the truth. There are a couple of reasons for that and both boil down to the cosy and secret deals that were done behind the scenes at the time of the Good Friday Agreement. Those deals include the on-the-run letters and the statement made by Senator Michael McDowell regarding the Garda not pursuing historical crimes committed during the Troubles. It is very hard for victims to accept that our suffering and the crimes committed on us by terrorists would not be investigated. If one considers it from our perspective, it means the terrorists have got off scot free and there is no incentive for them to tell the truth if they know they will never be charged, they have the on-the-run letters and, according to Senator McDowell's statement, the Garda will not prosecute them. Why would they tell the truth if they know they will never have to face up to what they did?

The second strand of that relates to taking responsibility for one's actions. It is clear that the former terrorists will never take responsibility for their actions. Deputy Adams recently described the death of Tom Oliver situation as a political killing. Tom Oliver was murdered in a most heinous fashion by the Provisional IRA and the Provisional movement. That is an undeniable fact. For that to be dressed up as a political killing is disgraceful and for Deputy Adams to say it would be counter-productive to look for prosecutions is unacceptable. The victims perceive that the Provisional movement and the terrorists are never going to tell the truth and that they try to wiggle like a worm at the end of a line to avoid telling it. One can look at what happened when my family and I entered a process with Deputy Adams. We thought we were doing the right thing by having an informal process to try to get answers. When we went to meet the IRA, we were told lies to try to get certain people off the hook. Deputy Adams then went into Dáil Éireann and told untruth after untruth when he made a personal statement. He did that because if he told the truth it would come back to senior people in his organisation.