Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte ollmhór roimh an mbreithiúnas ón ionchoisne an tseachtain seo caite a d'aithin go raibh na daoine a maraíodh i mBaile uí Mhurchú go hiomlán neamhchiontach. While I wholeheartedly welcome the decision made by the inquest in the North that the people in Ballymurphy who were murdered by the British army were completely innocent, I am still absolutely shocked and angered by the fact that the British establishment allowed the lie to hang in the air for 50 years. In 1971, the British forces killed ten innocent people while imposing mass internment on the nationalist community in the North of Ireland. Following 100 witnesses and more than 100 days of evidence, last week's findings served to shed light on the brutalisation of innocent people by the forces of the British state in the North. I salute the resilience of the Ballymurphy families and their campaign. Our hearts break because so many of those family members passed away before they were able to see their families' names cleared by the inquest.

Among the ten people who lost their lives was a mother of eight, and what happened to Joan Connolly is especially harrowing. She was 44 years old when she was killed by the British army. She was searching for her daughter and in the gunfire she had to hide behind the gable end of a house. She witnessed Noel Phillips, who was only 20, get shot and, like anybody with a bit of humanitarian sense in them, she went to help. For her kindness she was shot by the British soldier. The bullet went through her eye and, according to a witness, took half her face off. She was shot again repeatedly by the British army and was left to bleed to death for six hours. I am very cautious about relating in such harrowing detail what people went through in those situations, but it is extremely important that people throughout Ireland understand the brutality that was meted out to the nationalist community by the British state that day.

We often think of the wrongs that happened at that time as being in the past but they are not just in the past. Immediately after those murders, the reputation of the men and women of Ballymurphy was defamed by the British state. It lied about those victims. It said they were gunmen and instigators of violence. In doing so, it wronged again those it had just murdered, and that wrong remained right up until last week.

I have raised the experience of the families of the Ballymurphy massacre over and over in the Dáil and in the media and I have to echo Deputy Daly's words: most of the time in this Chamber and in the establishment press I have felt there has not been enough support for those families. There is a hierarchy of victims for some in the Dáil. For some there was no political capital to be made from these families' campaigns. Having been murdered by the British army and defamed by the British state, and in many ways by some in the southern establishment, their deaths were discriminated against in a shocking way. Yesterday was the anniversary of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings. In that case we had a Garda investigation that was not properly carried out, we had a Fine Gael and Labour Government that in reality took little interest in what happened and we had, and have still, a British state that remained silent on the truth of what happened. The deputy leader of Aontú and Mid Ulster councillor, Denise Mullen, was four years old when she witnessed her father, an SDLP supporter and civil rights supporter at the time, being murdered by agents of the British state in front of her in her home. Justice and truth have been withheld from the majority of victims and survivors of the Glenanne gang too. As for the southern establishment's interest in victims in the North of Ireland, I have raised with three separate taoisigh the request that they meet with the victims of the Glenanne gang: first with Enda Kenny, who never replied to my request, second with Deputy Varadkar, who never met with the families, and third with the current Taoiseach. In fairness to the current Taoiseach, he has not been able to meet them because of Covid. However, I urge him and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, who is present, to grab that nettle and choose a date to meet those families now that the Covid threat is receding.

Now the Tories are talking about providing an amnesty to British soldiers who were involved in such crimes. Last week, the families of Ballymurphy got the truth and now the Tories want to prevent them from getting justice. If that happens, it will add another wrong to what happened to these families. Many in the South, especially revisionists, seek to portray the British as independent and objective in the conflict that happened in the North. Ballymurphy blows that idea out of the water. The British were equal combatants in the trouble in our country. Why are the British soldiers who killed those innocent victims on that day not in jail? The reason they are not is that the British state remains in combat with truth and justice to this very day. For as long as it prevents people from finding a pathway to justice, it is doing wrong by families such as those of the Ballymurphy massacre.

The Irish Government is a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement and the Stormont House Agreement. It has to step up to the plate. It is dealing with a very belligerent partner in those agreements. I believe the southern Government is a junior partner in those agreements at the moment. Our Government needs to step up to the plate, co-guarantee those international agreements and make sure that victims right throughout the North of Ireland, on all sides, have a pathway to the truth and justice for their families.

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