Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)

I accept the Minister of State's statement that the Government's view is that the peace process is sufficiently firmly bedded down to enable it to withstand whatever pressures are brought to bear upon it. Increasingly, however, the needs of victims and the bereaved are surfacing, on all sides. Issues are surfacing through the historical inquiries team, with some very limited success in some cases and with some degree of closure in others. Up-front honesty has been singularly lacking from all concerned regarding the disappeared of the McConville family. There is a very clear case for this issue to be addressed.

Will the Minister of State indicate whether he or the Minister for Justice and Equality intends to meet Mr. McIntyre and Mr. Moloney to discuss their circumstances, bearing in mind the fears they have expressed? To be fair to them, they embarked on the project in a genuine way. One might say they believed, perhaps naïvely, in the legal guarantees they received. I accept, on balance, the need to have this issue pursued to secure justice for the McConville family. Perhaps it might be short-circuited if people could indicate what occurred and how it happened so that the McConville family could be given closure. It was a disgraceful and unacceptable action that bore no relation to any degree of civility by any definition or yardstick. It is a stain on the country and the provisional movement in particular.

The Minister of State mentioned that the Government knew that victims' pain and hurt never ceased and that sensitive ways of dealing with the issue needed to be found. Those ways have eluded us because all parties to the situation, some more than others, proposed solutions that they knew would not travel on the other side, allowing them the facade of being interested in an international oversight body when they knew full well that it would never come about.

Despite the best efforts of the Eames-Bradley process, people could not be pulled together in this regard. As part of the agenda, there is a desire to bring closure to the many families who suffered unspeakable losses as a result of the murder and mayhem of the years in question.

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