Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

The names of the boys and men who were murdered by the British military on the streets of Derry 50 years ago are: Patrick Doherty, 31, Gerald Donaghey, 17, Jackie Duddy, 17, Hugh Gilmour, 17, Michael Kelly, 17, Michael McDaid, 20, Kevin McElhinney. 17, Barney McGuigan, 41, Gerard McKinney, 35, William McKinney, 26, William Nash, 19, James Wray, 22 and John Young, 17, and John Johnston, 59. The murders of these peaceful civil rights campaigners changed the course of history forever. When a government murders its own citizens who are marching for equality in broad daylight, it becomes clear that the state itself is the problem.

Aontú was proud to join with the other political parties in laying wreaths in Derry on Saturday to remember these boys and men. It still surprises me - maybe it should not - that the emotion of what happened 50 years ago still catches me with the same intensity every single time I attend a commemoration in Derry.

Irish nationalists were discriminated against by the British state in terms of housing, jobs and civil rights, and when they campaigned on the streets, they were murdered by the British state. When they sought to peacefully change the situation, they were also murdered by the British state or censored or banned from the media.

Bloody Sunday was not an isolated incident. Indeed, it followed the Ballymurphy massacre, which happened in the previous August, where the same regiment of the British army murdered ten unarmed citizens. They were: Fr. Hugh Mullan, 38, Francis Quinn, 19, Daniel Teggart, 44, Joan Connolly, 44, Noel Phillips, 19, Joseph Murphy, 41, John Laverty, 20, Joseph Corr, 43, Edward Doherty, 31, and John McKerr, 49 - all murdered by the British state in Ireland.

Joan Connolly was a 44-year-old mother of eight. She was shot when she went to the aid of a young man, Noel Phillips, who himself had been shot and wounded by British soldiers. Joan was shot several times in the head and body and her injuries were so severe that part of her face was blown off. She bled to death because the British army prevented emergency medical attention from getting to her even though she cried out for hours. Her injuries were so horrific that her family struggled to identify her body, and they finally did so on the third attempt due only to the fact she had red hair. I am shocked that so few people in the South of Ireland know Joan's name. If we are honest with ourselves, one of the reasons her name is not widely known in this jurisdiction relates to the fact there has been very little political capital in her death. Her name is not thrown back and forth in this Chamber or on radio stations coming up to elections. Unfortunately, she is not known, because of her political value. It is a shocking situation.

In July 1972, five Catholics were murdered in the Springhill estate in west Belfast, again by the British army. After these murders took place, the British started to take international heat, tension and condemnation, so they changed strategy clearly and moved their murders to being undercover murders, in collusion with loyalist paramilitaries. The Glenanne gang went on to murder 120 people in a small triangle between counties Armagh and Tyrone. The father of the deputy leader of Aontú, Denise Mullen, who is a councillor in Dungannon, was murdered in front of her when she was four years of age. They went after her mother in that house and shot a number of times at her, and she fled into the fields, leaving her daughter in the house. Her daughter had to remain there without any help from the emergency services for a number of hours because the emergency services were worried the house was booby-trapped. It is an incredible situation.

On Saturday, I took part in a programme with the Ancient Order of Hibernians in which we discussed Operation Greenwich. That report is incredible. It details the murders of Gerard Casey from Rasharkin; of Eddie Fullerton in Buncrana; of Patrick Shanaghan in Castlederg, County Tyrone; of Thomas Donaghy of Kilrea, County Derry; and of Bernard O'Hagan in Magharafelt; the attempted murder of James McCorriston in Coleraine; the murder of Daniel Cassidy in Kilrea, County Derry; the attempted murder of Patrick McErlean in Dunloy, County Antrim; the murder of Malachy Carey of Ballymoney; and the murders of Robert Dalrymple, James Kelly, James McKenna and Noel O'Kane at Castlerock, County Derry. It also discusses the murders of John Burns, Moira Duddy, Joseph McDermott, James Moore, John Moyne, Stephen Mullen and Karen Thompson in the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, County Derry. The eighth victim, Samuel Montgomery, died as a result of his injuries.

All these people were fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, and many of them would be alive today in Ireland if it were not for the actions of the British state. Some people feel this is history but most of these families live with this every day, either through the post-traumatic stress they experience or by seeing the perpetrators of those murders living in the same communities as them. Last year, Denise Mullen received a death threat from the man who murdered her father, and she has been driving around for a year looking in her side-view mirrors to see whether somebody is following her.

I attended the 50th anniversary of the Ballymurphy massacre in August. One sentence that was repeated over and over again from the stage by the relatives who were speaking was, very simply, that the British are trying to get away with murder. It is a phrase we hear so often in our lives, but the gravity of it is shocking when we see that is the actual effect the British are trying to achieve here. The murders of Irish people in Ireland by British soldiers were the actions of a rogue state. There were no proper investigations, evidence was destroyed, there were few or no convictions and there was no accountability. These were the actions of a rogue state. In many cases, the people who carried out these murders got promotions and achieved improved careers from the British state as a result of those acts. If we are really honest, this southern State on many occasions stood idly by when those murders happened. I often think of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and the lacklustre investigation that happened on the part of the southern State at the time in respect of finding the perpetrators. Even today in this Chamber, much of what happened is met with whataboutery. Every single family who had a loved one murdered by whichever side over the past 50 years needs to find justice and truth and to have accountability, but the whataboutery that exists, as has been seen during this debate, shows that political capital is still alive and well in the context of this debate.

The British amnesty that has been sought reflects the actions of a rogue state. It is very important that both we, as a political group here, and the Government increase the urgency and the efforts to hold the British state to account with regard to this. The British signed the Good Friday Agreement and the Stormont House Agreement, which are international treaties. They have a responsibility under international law to adhere to those treaties and agreements, and I believe wholeheartedly that we are not doing enough work to pursue the British Government to ensure it upholds those treaties. In the names of all the people I mentioned, we must redouble our efforts to hold the perpetrators of those violent crimes to account.

See this speech in context