Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)

This Private Members' motion is a timely reminder of the fact that the British Government still has many questions to answer about its involvement in collusion. We support the demands from victims' families that the truth be told about collusion.

From the very creation of the Six County statelet, there has been a campaign of state-sponsored murder and collusion with Unionist paramilitaries. It has existed at the very highest levels of the British military and political establishment. During 30 years of conflict, Unionist paramilitaries were supplied with information and their actions directed and controlled by special branch and British intelligence services. From the mid-1980s onwards, British intelligence agencies effectively controlled all loyalist paramilitary activity through the use of agents, informers and agents provocateurs. This included the murders of Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson and many other Nationalists and republicans, including members of Sinn Féin.

The report of Mr. Justice Henry Barron made a significant statement on the bombing in Belturbet, County Cavan, on 28 December 1972, in which 15 year old Geraldine O'Reilly of Belturbet and 17 year old Patrick Stanley of Clara, County Offaly, were killed. The report names a Fermanagh loyalist, Robert Bridges, as the prime suspect, who at the time was a serving member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, which was a regiment of the British army. The Barron report stated that gardaí requested the RUC in 1975 to question Mr. Bridges about the Belturbet bombing, but the inquiry was "not aware of the result, if any" of these requests. This raises very serious issues for both the British authorities and the Garda. These questions have not yet been answered.

The British Government must be forced to co-operate with inquiries on collusion. The Barron report covers bombings in 1972 and 1973, including two in Dublin in which three bus workers were killed, and Belturbet as well as non-fatal explosions in Clones and Pettigo. The British Government again has refused to co-operate with an inquiry established by the Oireachtas. It abuses its special relationship with the Irish Government to avoid international accountability for the actions of its armed forces in Ireland. The Irish Government should not stand for this and should bring the issue of collusion before the court of world opinion.

The Barron report highlighted the devastating results of British terror in Ireland. From the beginning of the conflict in 1969, the British Government's forces carried out attacks in the Twenty-six Counties directly and through their loyalist paramilitary surrogates. The December 1972 bombing of Dublin was clearly designed to swing public opinion and the Oireachtas towards repressive measures. The Government of the time allowed British terror to succeed when it passed draconian amendments to the Offences Against the State Act. The co-ordination of the bombing of Clones, Pettigo and Belturbet, where two teenagers died, were part of the same effort to change policy in this State, and succeeded in doing so.

The British Government failed to co-operate with the first Barron report on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974.

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