Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank John Finucane for his presentation today. This committee deals with the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement after the culmination of decades of terrible conflict in the North of our island which seeped into the rest of this island and into Britain.

All of us acknowledge the immense hurt and pain. I speak as the son of a man who was in prison for nine years as an IRA prisoner. As an Irish republican, I am aware of the immense hurt and pain the IRA caused to many families across the North of Ireland. The reason for the particular emphasis on the case of Pat Finucane is that the missing piece in the jigsaw is the profound role of the British Government and the British state in our conflict. Thanks to the diligence and determination of families like the Finucanes and others over many decades, it is now incontrovertible that the British state and its intelligence agencies, or security agencies as it presented them, were controlling, arming, financing and directing unionist and loyalist paramilitaries to kill across the North of Ireland. The Finucane case is the most obvious one of them all because of the multiplicity of agencies involved in co-ordinating that political assassination and murder.

The final piece of the jigsaw in dealing with the conflict and the legacy of that conflict, the immense hurt and pain inflicted on so many people by all sides, is the British Government and the apparatus of the British state putting up their hands and admitting that they were a central component of that conflict, and apologising for that. It was not a few rotten apples or a few loose cannons here or there. They were a central controlling component.

When this case reaches its conclusion, as it surely will, the full truth will be known, and justice will be done for all the people of these islands so that we can heal and build a better country. I heartily commend the Finucane family on the service they are doing for all our people. Dr. Farry is absolutely right that this is not just a nationalist issue. This is an issue of healing for all of us looking for the full truth to come out. I thank Mr. Finucane.