Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for brining forward this important motion. I welcome Justice for the Forgotten and the families of those who were murdered 50 years ago this month in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and the survivors. I also welcome Fergus Dowd, who is the producer of the film that was mentioned earlier and which premiered last Friday. “May-17-74: The Anatomy of a Massacre” was produced by Fergus and Joe Lee, the director, in conjunction with the families and Justice for the Forgotten, to once again shine a light on this horrific act of mass murder. It was the greatest single atrocity that took place during the period of the Troubles. Incredibly, 50 years on, those families are still looking for the truth about and justice for what happened to their loved ones or, in the case of survivors, what happened to them. No words any of us can say here can possibly convey or do justice to the pain, loss, tragedy, the impact and trauma of this horrific act of mass murder which was carried out by loyalist paramilitaries with the collusion and involvement of the British state. It is simply outrageous that they are still fighting for justice. I am not an expert in this area. I want to thank the families I have talked to, and Fergus and others, for helping me to understand some of what I hope are the important questions they are looking to get answered.

One of the relatives of victims of that day, Cathy Doyle, asked me to show the Tánaiste and the House these shoes, which are the shoes of one the victims, Jacqueline, who was 16 months old. Jacqueline O'Brien was murdered on that day along with her sister, Anna Marie who was four months, and her mother and father, Anna O’Brien and Johnny. Anna was 22. I hope Cathy will not mind me saying that her life has been indelibly scarred by the loss – how could it not be – of her nieces, of her sister and her sister’s husband. She remains traumatised. I asked her how she felt about the film the other night and she said that to be honest, she was thoroughly shaken by all those memories being brought back. Talking to some of the other relatives outside, I asked about their expectations for today. I think it is fair to say it was pessimistic, really, as to whether anything was going to change and whether they are actually going to get the truth and justice that they deserve.

It does not surprise me greatly that Britain wants to hide its involvement in this massacre. It is an absolute disgrace and it tells you something not very pleasant – something quite dark – about the British state that it will not give the people the information and the truth about what happened and the involvement of the British State in this act of mass murder, in this act of terrorism. But the questions I want to ask are about what this State owes to the families and the victims. How could it be – the State surely has some information about this – that the investigations here were closed down after ten weeks? Why are the Garda files missing? These have never been seen and are generally believed to have been destroyed. Why was the forensic evidence of the bombing sent North and the person, Dr. James Donovan, the Garda forensic technical expert, who did get some of the material, did not know until 25 years later that this had happened? Therefore, of course, there was no co-operation on the examination of that forensic material, which would have shown something about who carried it out, about the collusion and so on. How could it possibly be that not one survivor or bereaved family member was interviewed by the Garda after the atrocity or to date? It was only in the context of Operation Denton that Jon Boutcher knocked on the doors of some of those affected. How could it be that the investigative material presented to the McEntee report has been blocked from being given to the families’ legal teams by the use of the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004, by which it can be blocked for 50 years? How could it be that even now, the Irish State is not willing to give those affected and the survivors the information to which they surely are entitled? How could it be that 29 justice Ministers have refused to give over information, evidential files and so on that has been sought by the families?

These to me are absolutely incredible. It is not just about what the British state refuses to disclose about its complicity with this atrocity but the questions the Irish State has to ask about this. Indeed it is about the circumstances, as the film well dramatised the other day, in which the sort of muted response of the Irish State to this atrocity seemed more concerned about scoring political points in the context of a wider political debate than to actually pursue the justice deserved by the families and victims of those horrific bombings. I hope that some of those questions can now be answered by the Irish Government in the context of the 50th anniversary.

See this speech in context