Ms Margaret Urwin:

I will answer a question from Mr. Paul Maskey, who asked about mental and physical health provisions here. Very good assistance is given for those with physical difficulties; for example, hearing aids, prosthetic limbs and so on. The Victims of Crime Office within the Department of Justice and Equality is very good on that, and I want to stress that that is very much appreciated. Unfortunately, there is huge reluctance when it comes to mental health services and simply asking for some counselling. Deputy O'Sullivan, Deputy Seán Crowe, Deputy Smith and others have raised this issue with successive Ministers for Justice, including Deputies Shatter and Fitzgerald, but they are very resistant to providing any type of counselling. Thankfully, WAVE has now appointed a counsellor in Dún Laoghaire, and any of our people who want to access counselling can go to him, if agreed by WAVE. We have had to rely on Belfast for that, because the Government here simply refused. It is not as though there is a whole crowd of people looking for counselling; the numbers are very small.

Dr. Leahy said that young people in Britain are not aware of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings but are aware of the Omagh bombing. They are not the only ones; it is the very same here. In at least one history text book for the Junior Cert, the child of our youngest survivor found to her horror that there was no mention of it and that the conflict did not happen here at all; it stopped at the Border.

The Dublin and Monaghan bombings are not mentioned. It mentions May 1974 and important dates, but what does it cover in May 1974? It is the Ulster Workers Council strike. There is no mention of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, what happened in Dundalk or any of the other attacks. The only reference is to the total number killed, which is not correct anyway. We have raised that with the Minister for Education and Skills, but everybody claims somebody else has responsibility and it is a committee or something that decides what should be included in history textbooks. We were quite horrified at that.