Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I do not want to delay the legislation. I understand how serious it is. However, I want to support Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan's amendment wholeheartedly. As a young schoolboy, I was in Dublin on the day of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. There was very little communication at that time and my parents, who are now deceased, and the parents of the other children I was with thought we were all in danger and might never come home. Thankfully, we all got home safely albeit at 2 a.m. instead of 9 p.m. It is shocking that there has been no closure on that. I salute Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan on her efforts and the cross-party meetings she has held as she tries to get closure on this. That was 1974. If we fast-forward to the Omagh bombing, which took place in 1998, we come to one of the biggest episodes of collusion ever. Those killings were needless. They should never have happened. Information was passed on. I have that at first hand from a retired garda from my own neighbourhood. That information was not acted on because to do otherwise might have blown the cover of an undercover agent. Shockingly, 29 people lost their lives. Michael Gallagher has been in here. He attended a Fine Gael Ard-Fheis at the invitation of the former leader, Deputy Enda Kenny, and his family. Television cameras were brought to bear on him and he was told he would not get justice under Fianna Fáil but would under Fine Gael. When Deputy Enda Kenny became Taoiseach, that was the end of it. There has been avoidance, subterfuge and everything else and nothing has happened on the Omagh bombing. I name those two events but there are many other victims who have not received justice. I see nothing in the legislation that will make that right. Everything is not right in the state of Denmark, nor in the State of Ireland. It is not good enough. Those families stood down their activities on the Omagh bombing as they could not keep going. They will have a commemoration, however. It is not good enough that we are dancing on the head of a pin and failing to deal with things honestly and in an upfront manner. We need international people to come in with no baggage to deal with legacy issues fairly and honestly. What happened in Dublin was a travesty but what happened in Omagh was a bigger one because it was so many years later. Information was not acted on and the bomb was let go into Omagh to cause havoc.

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