Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein)

Tá mé an-bhuíoch don Cheann Comhairle mar thug sé seans dom caint ar an ábhar tábhachtach stairiúil seo.

The families of the 11 victims of the British Parachute Regiment, who were shot and killed in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in the three days after the introduction of internment in 1971, are looking to the Irish Government for solidarity and active political support in their campaign for justice. Few in this Dáil can imagine the terror and the trauma that families in Nationalist areas of the North endured when internment was introduced. Thousands of homes were raided and ransacked, prisoners were tortured and working class areas were under military occupation by the British Army. Fewer still can understand the horror which 11 families in Ballymurphy suffered as they discovered that their loved ones had been shot and killed by British soldiers, or the torment, frustration and anger they experienced as the British state moved to ensure that the legal and judicial system covered up what had happened.

Of the 11 who died, ten were men, including a local priest, and the eleventh was a mother of eight. I am from Ballymurphy. These citizens were my neighbours. Fr. Hugh Mullan was my priest. These killings left 46 children without a parent. Many of these children were evacuated to this part of the island, mostly to military camps as refugees. Briege Foyle and her sister were in Waterford when an RTE television news bulletin informed them that their mother had been buried that day. Briege described it thus.

[It was] like a nightmare. We couldn't grasp it...We stayed with relatives but cried to go home. We imagined home would be like it always had been but it wasn't. It was an empty shell without our mummy. We had already been through a terrible ordeal but it didn't stop there. The paratroopers continued to torture us. They used to sing "where's your mama gone" outside our door and you couldn't walk down the street without them taunting you. We were all so terrified.

None of the dead was connected with or in any way part of any armed group. They were all unarmed citizens. The success of the British State in covering this up meant that Ballymurphy became a forgotten massacre. Now, as adults, the children and surviving siblings of those killed want the names of their loved ones cleared, and they want the Minister's help and that of the Government to do this.

The news yesterday that the North's Attorney General has ordered new inquests in ten of the 11 cases is to be welcomed. This is a landmark legal judgement that provides the families with an opportunity to get to the truth of the killing of their loved ones. The decision by the Attorney General is also evidence of the importance of having policing and justice powers transferred from London to Ireland. However, the families believe that the role of the British State and its armed forces warrants a full, thorough international investigation and an apology from the British Government which recognises their innocence. Will the Government support them and join them in demanding this investigation?

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