Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, to the Dáil Chamber. On 21 February 1988, 30 years ago today, Aidan McAnespie, a young nationalist and Gaelic football player, was shot dead as he made his way to his local Gaelic football club grounds at Aghaloo, Aughnacloy, County Tyrone. He had just passed through the British army checkpoint on foot when a single bullet, fired by a British soldier in the watchtower structure above and behind him, robbed him of his young life and robbed his family of a dearly loved son and brother. The McAnespie family grieve to this day.

This was no accidental discharge, a view since expressed on behalf of even the PSNI. Aidan McAnespie was told repeatedly as he passed through that checkpoint, going to and from his work in Monaghan, that he would be shot. He feared for his life and, as time would confirm, with good reason.

At the time of Aidan's murder I was a Sinn Féin councillor for north Monaghan. During the previous year, 1987, Aidan McAnespie came to our party office in Monaghan and recounted to me the details of the threats to which he was being subjected. I sought to assist him but the avenues open to me were limited due to section 31 censorship and the refusal of Government Ministers, the predecessors of the current Minister, to meet or engage with Sinn Féin elected representatives. I sought and secured a meeting with Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich at his residence in Armagh and he took up Aidan's case and lobbied extensively on his behalf. The cardinal later officiated at Aidan's funeral mass and once again affirmed his personal belief in, and solidarity with, this young innocent member of the wider nationalist and Catholic community north of the Border. Today, only the most bigoted of anti-nationalists and anti-Catholics would deny the truth of Aidan McAnespie's murder.

I and countless others have lobbied throughout the intervening years for the Government to release the Crowley report into the murder of Aidan McAnespie, principally to the McAnespie family. The Crowley investigation was established by the Government here in Dublin. Deputy Garda Commissioner Eugene Crowley anchored the process and, over a period of time, met with witnesses to Aidan's death and others who had relevant information regarding Aidan's experiences at the Aughnacloy British army checkpoint.

I was one of those who presented before the deputy commissioner at that time. While I have no personal recall of any reference to anonymity or confidentiality when I attended the Crowley investigation, I can accept that it could have come up in the case of other witnesses. Those were very different times. They were clearly dark and dangerous times and, following the murder of Aidan McAnespie, a whole community that straddled the Border was deeply affected. Some, especially those who travelled through the Aughnacloy checkpoint daily or regularly, were fearful for their safety.

I suggest that, 30 years later, we are in a very different time and place, that those fears no longer exist and that there is certainly no justification for them. Accordingly, I ask the Minister to proactively establish the number of witnesses who presented to the deputy commissioner or who forwarded written evidence, and if he will establish the number to whom some form of a confidentiality understanding applied. I ask him to undertake to contact each of them to establish if, 30 years later and in very different times, they are now willing to allow the release of their evidence as part of the overall Crowley report and to allow it to be given to the McAnespie family in line with its wishes.

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