Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Two recent reports by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland into loyalist murders and attempted murders in the north west between 1989 and 1994 and south Belfast between 1990 and 1998 shed light on the activities of British state agents and their involvement in and connection to numerous murders and attempted murders. These are just the latest reports setting out the nature of the relationship between the British state and loyalist paramilitary gangs, a relationship that nationalist and republican communities were told for years did not exist. They were told it was just republican propaganda. These investigations identified, based on all the available evidence and information, that there was collusive behaviour and activity involving intelligence and surveillance; a failure to warn and conduct threat assessments in respect of threats to life; the failure to retain records and the deliberate destruction of files, especially those relating to informants that the police suspected of serious criminality, including murder; the failure to maintain records about the deactivation of weapons, which the Police Ombudsman described as indicative of a desire to avoid accountability; the failure of police to adequately address UDR officers passing information to loyalist paramilitaries; an absence of control and oversight in the recruitment and management of informants; and the passive turning of a blind eye to informants suspected of being involved in serious criminality, including murder, and the continued use of those informants when it was known that they were involved in those activities.

Many loyalist killings, included in these two reports, were carried out with weapons that British state agents helped import and distribute to the UDA, UVF and Ulster Resistance. Indeed, the previous Police Ombudsman, Dr. Maguire, established that individuals responsible for the importation and distribution of these weapons, which were later used in at least 80 murders, were never subject to police investigation. His investigation also established that a number of these individuals were, or subsequently became, police informants.

Britain can have no hiding place from the deliberate, calculated policy of arming, directing and controlling death squads in Ireland. Therefore, I welcome the Irish Government's stated opposition to the amnesty sought by the British Government for its state forces, intelligence services and the agents who killed for them. What are needed now, however, are genuine determination and effort by the Irish Government to put intensive and unrelenting pressure on the British Government to drop its shameful amnesty legislation and return to the legacy mechanisms, as agreed between the two Governments and the political parties as part of the Stormont House Agreement.

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