Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 25 May 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement

Representatives of the Ballymurphy Families

Ms Carmel Quinn:

I will answer the questions about how the families felt. The night before, I did not sleep at all in anticipation of what would be delivered. When Mrs. Justice Keegan delivered her findings, I felt overjoyed but also felt very sad. Here we were 50 years later. It was a lifetime - my lifetime. My mummy and daddy were not there. My eldest sister, Tilly, passed away on Christmas Eve 2014. She had been through the courts with my daddy because my mummy was not able for the first inquest in 1972, which was a sham, as we all know.

The findings made me feel a bit relieved because my mummy had asked me and my other sister to prove to the world that her son was not on trial and was innocent, and we did that. It was the same day that the Queen was making her speech. We were waiting. We had got these findings, we had the truth and we wondered if we would be denied justice. The next day, when the Secretary of State for the Six Counties gave a so-called apology, it totally deflated the families again. You are away up there, you are feeling, "Right, we did this", and you are deflated again because they have given you the truth but they are taking away justice. As a family, we still feel we did that for my mummy. We did that for my brother. Now, we need accountability as a family.

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