Maureen O'Sullivan (Dublin Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Do I take it from the Minister's response that he will meet the Justice for the Forgotten group? With regard to funding last year, the group was fearful that the funding was to be stopped and it was necessary to put pressure on the previous Minister and to have meetings with him on that issue.

Last May, on the 40th anniversary of the bombings, the Taoiseach attended the commemoration on Talbot Street. The relatives and survivors have been waiting for answers for the past 40 years. This is an urgent matter. How much longer must they wait? When I met the Secretary of State, Theresa Villiers, I did not get the slightest impression that this was top of her agenda or that she would support the release of that information to an international commission.

I refer to the accounts given by the survivors, one of whom was a 14 year old boy who had just begun working. He woke up in the morgue because he was presumed dead. He is living with the nightmares and the psychological scars of that incident. President Michael D. Higgins put it succinctly when he said that a strategy of amnesia is simply not an option. We are heading into the 41st anniversary and it is time the commission of inquiry was given access to all of the documents.

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