Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)

Ba mhaith liom an rún seo a mholadh. I welcome Justice for the Forgotten and commend the group on its dedication and determination. I also commend Relatives for Justice and representatives of the Pat Finucane Centre who were in the Gallery last night. Tá sé ráite ag an grúpa Justice for the Forgotten gur thug cuairt Bhanríon Shasana seans órga do Rialtas Shasana a chomhaid ar fad a chur ar fáil. I commend the motion to the House.

Hiding the truth of its involvement in human rights abuse is something the British system has done well through scores of conflicts. Currently in London, four survivors of the notorious detention camps operated by the British authorities in Kenya in the 1950s are taking the British Government to court for compensation. An open letter from the Kenya Human Rights Commission declares: "It is a little known fact that during the Mau Mau war in the run-up to Kenyan independence, the then British Government systematically violated human rights and committed war crimes on a vast scale".

I raise this issue because it is the context for acts of violence in Belfast, Derry, Dublin, Monaghan and Dundalk 20 years later, in 1974. Following the violent suppression of the civil rights campaign in the late 1960s and the pogroms against Catholic areas by the Unionist regime, the British Government brought its tactics from Kenya and Aden to this country. It also employed some of the same people. Among them was Brigadier Frank Kitson, who was posted to Belfast. Kitson was the British Army's foremost expert on counter insurgency. He had served in many of the wars Britain had fought and lost during the 1950s and 1960s, including Malaya, Cyprus, Aden and Kenya. In Kenya, Kitson established pseudo gangs of loyalist Kenyans who carried out actions against ordinary citizens and sought to discredit the Kenyan freedom fighters.

In his book Low Intensity Operations, Kitson sets a context and outlines a template for much of what happened in the following decades in the North and in this State. I commend that book to Deputies. It was as a result of his strategies that British intelligence agencies, working with the RUC, infiltrated loyalist paramilitary groups, including the Ulster Defence Association, which they helped to establish. The British Army set up the UDA and it reorganised the UVF. Collusion between the British State agencies and Unionist death squads was structured, institutionalised and was a matter of British Government policy and administrative practice. It was not an accident.

There are many tragic examples of this, including attacks on Sinn Féin members and family members and the murder of councillor Eddie Fullerton, mar adúirt Pádraig Mac Lochlainn. His murder was just one of these, but perhaps the most infamous is the murder of human rights lawyer, Pat Finucane, who was shot in his home in February 1989. This is how collusion worked and it is the backdrop to the attacks in Dublin and Monaghan. The Glenanne gang, which was responsible for this attack, was a mixture of UVF, RUC and UDR personnel. The independent international panel on collusion found that this gang was responsible for at least 74 murders. This included the Dublin-Monaghan bombs and the bomb attack in December in Dundalk in which two men, Jack Rooney and Hugh Waters, were killed.

As we all know, in 2001 a commission of inquiry, under Mr. Justice Henry Barron, was established by the Irish Government. Ní raibh sé de chumhacht ag an Breitheamh Barron iachall a chur ar daoine fianaise a thabhairt in aghaidh a dtola agus ní raibh sé sásta leis an leibhéal comhoibrithe a fuair séón Ministry of Defence sa Bhreatain. I 1999, chinn an Taoiseach ag an am, Bertie Ahern, ar fiosrúcháin ar leith a chur ar siúl leis an scéal a fhiosrú. Ach go dtí seo, níl dul chun cinn déanta leis an fhírinne a bhaint amach. Níos mó ná 30 bliain níos moille, tá an fhírinne fós á chuartú.

As people here know, four reports were published and a sub-committee of cross-party Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights conducted an extensive examination of the reports. Despite its conclusions and despite the mountain of evidence, the British Government has refused to co-operate with investigations and attempts to get to the truth. Imagine this happened somewhere else. Imagine reading in some of our newspapers that one state had committed such an atrocity against another state, that the government and Parliament of the victim state had brought forward all of the evidence and the other state refused to co-operate and ignored the request from the government and Parliament. I accept there is a responsibility in terms of asserting all the time that this is an independent sovereign Government. It needs to be asserted.

I regret that the Taoiseach did not respond positively to my proposal yesterday that the Irish and British Governments should invite a reputable and independent international body to create an independent international truth commission as part of a viable truth recovery process that would deal with all of the legacy issues. The Government needs to get its act together on how to deal with this issue of the past. It cannot be left to the British Government any more than it can be left to any other combatant force.

Much is being made at this time of the visit by the English Queen. Sinn Féin has set out its position on all of the matters around this. I have also made it clear that we hope some good comes from this visit. However, if the visit is to have a real and lasting significance beyond its important symbolic gestures, the Government must realise that this is but part of a journey. It is a page in a book, not the end of the book. Our country is still partitioned and our people are divided. We need, and the Government needs to lead on this, to end these divisions and to build unity and freedom. We need to continue that journey beyond this week. On Saturday, the Queen will have gone. We need to continue working ahead. We need to write the next chapter of our book and we need to deal with the past as part of that.

Genuine national reconciliation, an inclusive healing process and the closure which victims, victim's families and survivors deserve, demand that all of us must pledge ourselves to tell and to hear the truth about the past. For my part, I will actively encourage republicans to co-operate with such a process. In the meantime, the victims of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings, of the bomb in Dundalk and other killings in this State must be supported. That includes the need for the Government to restore funding to the Justice for the Forgotten group.

This morning, the British Foreign Secretary, William Hague said, "I tend to almost always favour transparency and openness in government, including about the past, but there are legal constraints". Alas, that is not good enough and the Tánaiste should say so. I welcome the confirmation from the Minister that the Taoiseach has raised this issue with the British Prime Minister. I look forward to Mr. Cameron agreeing to the demand of the Dáil, the Taoiseach and of the families of the Justice for the Forgotten campaign. Níos mó ná 30 bliain níos moille, tá an fhírinne fós caillte. I urge this Dáil to support the motion.

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