Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

On 5 February 1992, the UDA murdered five nationalists and wounded another nine in the Sean Graham bookmaker shop on the Lower Ormeau Road in Belfast. Two men wearing boiler suits and balaclavas pumped 44 bullets into the victims. The names of the five Catholic men and boys were: Christy Doherty, aged 52; Jack Duffin, aged 66; James Kennedy, aged 15; Peter Magee, aged 18; and William McManus, aged 54. The police ombudsman for the North yesterday released another shocking report. There has been a litany of reports. She detailed the murder of 11 Catholics by loyalists with the assistance of the British military. Her report also investigates the murders of Harry Conlon, Aidan Wallace, Michael Gilbride, Martin Moran, Theresa Clinton and Larry Brennan and the attempted murder of Samuel Caskey in 1990.

The RUC special branch had informers who were directly involved in these murders. Informants employed by the special branch were murdering Catholics throughout the North at that moment in time. A police gun was in the hands of loyalists who were involved in these murders. The ombudsman identified eight British informants linked to the murder or attempted murder of 27 people. The RUC destroyed files. It failed to investigate CCTV footage. It failed to search the houses of suspects. It failed to carry out forensics on blood. It failed to test a getaway car for gunshot residue. These reports come just a few weeks after another report by the ombudsman that was released on similar murders on the north coast, in Derry and Antrim. The police ombudsman has 400 such requests in her in-tray at the moment. Those are 400 requests relating to British state collusion in the murder of citizens. These were citizens of a state murdered by the same state. They were Irish people murdered by the British military in Ireland. It is not ancient history. This is in our lifetime. The perpetrators of these murders live in the same towns and villages as the families of the dead loved ones. Some of those securocrats still work within the security forces. Some of them have actually been promoted as a result of their activities. In many cases, the PSNI knows who carried out these murders but there seems to be no effort to seek proper convictions.

The British Government is a signatory to the Good Friday Agreement and the Stormont House Agreement. These are international agreements. The British Government has international responsibilities to justice. I am asking the Taoiseach to use every single tool, including our position in the UN, to make sure there is an international investigation into murders by the British state in Ireland. I am appealing also to the Government to look at the creation of a historical inquiries team on this side of the Border, in a similar fashion to the Smithwick tribunal, to take evidence from people from the North and to try to get to the heart of what happened to these people and to ensure there is justice.

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