Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Families' quest for truth and justice is not a quest with an infinite amount of time. So many families who have had family members murdered due to British state collusion have seen the parents, partners, siblings and children of those killed pass away without the truth behind their loved ones' killings being known. There needs to be a sense of urgency about this.

This weekend marked the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. Like the Minister, Deputy Coveney, I was in Derry to see the families walk the route their loved ones walked that day and one thing that struck me was that many family members who were walking that route were far too young to have been there that day.

Operation Greenwich dates from the late 1980s and early 1990s, and everyone affected at that time would now be in their 30s or older, and many now have children and grandchildren. All of those family members are affected by that trauma, the inter-generational trauma.

People have passed away but have passed on the baton for truth and justice to the next generation. Now we see grandchildren standing just as invested as those who were there on the day. The next generation are informed, educated and ready to continue the campaign for truth and justice.

The days of tea and sympathy are long gone and families are clear on this. People have rights under international law and it is time that they were met. The British state and the Irish State have obligations in this regard.

There is no longer any question as to the role of the British state in the killings of people in Ireland and the evidence of collusion by Britain is now irrefutable. We now have official Government reports which outline the role of collusion.

We have, from the report recently published, evidence that military intelligence of the British Government oversaw the importation of South African weapons to be used by loyalist paramilitary groups to kill nationalists, republicans and Catholics. Some of these weapons were used in the attack on mourners in Milltown Cemetery in 1988 where John Murray, Caoimhín Mac Brádaigh and Thomas McErlean were murdered as they defended other mourners and saved lives that day. The fact that these weapons were imported from South Africa, with British intelligence knowledge, and used in this way is grotesque.

This report also shockingly states that an assistant chief constable of the RUC, now deceased, was aware that the names of 250 Catholics that came from the British army were in the hands of the UDA. It also states that this assistant chief constable intervened to stop those people, whose names were passed to the UDA, getting a warning that their lives were in danger. Some of those 250 people were dead within months. Let the gravity of that sink in.

It is important to realise that when we hear media reports that this report shows the RUC did not pass on information, the reality of that is that people were dead within months. This was not simply a piece of information. This was people's lives, people who died and whose families’ lives were destroyed.

We are now awaiting the publishing of a report by the Police Ombudsman at the start of next week which will deal with the killings of Sinn Féin members, Pat McBride and Paddy Loughran, who were murdered 30 years ago this week in the Sinn Féin centre in Belfast along with Michael Dwyer, a constituent who was in the advice centre at that time.

This week also marks the 30th anniversary of the attack on the Ormeau Road bookies which killed five people and injured seven. The reason I mention both of these is because they will be dealt with in this report. That these families have to wait 30 years for information is absolutely horrific.

What we now know - something the people of Belfast, the people of Derry, the people of the North and the people whose families were killed by British state collusion knew all along - and that there is no denying is that collusion was policy. We saw that with de Silva and we see it in the 19 killings in Operation Greenwich. This was not a coincidence. This was not a few rotten apples. This was British Government policy.

I have faith because I have faith in the families' resilience and in their courage and I know that one day the truth will out but there is a responsibility on all of us to stand with these families, to stand up to the British Government and its proposals and amnesty and to make sure that truth and justice comes about.

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