Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Ms Marie Anderson said she is deeply concerned about the scale of the findings identified in her lengthy and complex investigation. She refers to "The continued, unjustifiable use by Special Branch of informant(s) involved in serious criminality, including murder and the passive 'turning a blind eye' to such activities."

It was February 1992 when the Sean Graham bookmaker's shop was attacked and five people were killed. For roughly 25 years, the affected community had endured the British state's war against it. It began in the late 1960s when communities across the North said they wanted civil and human rights and equality in their own place. The only response of the British state to them was a violent one. That was sustained for all the time in question and more. That is what is really at the core of all this.

It is not just my view and that of most nationalists and republicans that there was collusion; it is our absolute conviction that there was collusion because it is the lived experience of all those affected. It is something they saw daily. They watched the RUC and British Army come into areas, swamp them for a number of hours, set up checkpoints, search houses and then disappear very quickly. Within minutes, the loyalist gangs would come in and carry out a murder or perhaps several murders. Then, suddenly the state forces would come back in again. This happened continuously on numerous occasions across the North throughout the years in question. It is our view and that of the vast majority that at the very heart of the British war in Ireland was the fact that the British controlled, directed and armed the loyalist paramilitaries so they could carry out their work. That is what they were doing. They were part of the state. The RUC, which was nothing more than a colonial militia, did exactly the same thing to assist them in respect of all that. The Police Ombudsman's reports will present evidence of this for many, and others will have suspicions. At the end of it all, we will need a process to deal with it all, but we have that process; we have the Good Friday Agreement, the St. Andrews Agreement and the Stormont House Agreement, which was the final attempt to come to an arrangement to deal with these legacy issues. In fairness to the Minister, he said in his speech that we have mechanisms set up to deal with this. Despite this, we find that the British Government, which is part of the same British establishment that organised and carried out the attacks and murders, is now saying it will not deal with legacy issues and instead have an amnesty for those who carried out the actions in question. It is shameful and outrageous that this is happening on this island at this stage, in 2022. It must end. I appeal to the Minister to use all his influence, not just on the British Government but also on the American Administration, whose ambassador was here at the beginning of this debate, and on states across Europe to put pressure on Mr. Boris Johnson and his government to go down the path that was agreed in Stormont House.

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