Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I too welcome members of the campaign group to the Gallery tonight. I thank them for all the work they have over the years on this. The fact they have had to do it shows that this building and the people who have been in this building for the past five decades have simply not done their jobs. It is the responsibility of the political establishment. It is the responsibility of the Department of Justice and the Minister for Justice to make sure the citizens of this country are projected, are kept safe and if there is an injustice done to them that there is a proper investigation and the truth is achieved about that. I also thank Fergus Dowd, who worked on the film about this issue, and I look forward to seeing the film and to gaining a better understanding of the events of the day.

It goes without saying that the Dublin and Monaghan bombings were the worst single atrocity that happened during the Troubles. They were unique in their severity. That is in no way to take away from the pain and suffering that was experienced by anybody else who lost a loved one during the Troubles. The Dublin and Monaghan bombings destroyed the lives of so many people and radically damaged the survivors and families left in their wake.

The emotional damage that was created cannot be quantified in any way but it is also important to recognise that many of these families were left destitute as a result of what happened to them and that families lost their homes in some circumstances. They were made homeless. Other families lost their fathers, who were the breadwinners in their homes at the time. It is incredible to think many of these families received absolutely no compensation whatsoever from the State for what happened to them and that people in the North of Ireland who have suffered significantly from the horrors of the Troubles have been offered compensation. This State has not seen fit yet to provide similar compensation for families who have lost so much over the last while.

These bombs killed 34 civilians and injured almost 300 people. There has been no justice. I think there are two reasons there has been no justice. The first is that the British state is responsible for the killings of these 34 individuals. The British state murdered these Irish people on the streets of our capital and the British state does not want the truth to ever come out about that. The British state used the Glenanne gang as a vehicle for the perpetration of these murders.

The Glenanne gang killed 120 people in Ireland during the 1970s and 1980s. I also want to mention Barney O'Dowd, a neighbour of mine who recently passed away. He survived an attack on his family in 1976. It was an attack that murdered his 24 year old son Barry, his 19 year old son Declan and which also killed his brother Joe. That attack was carried out by the UVF in tandem with the Glenanne gang on that day and Barney died just a month ago at the age of 100. He never received justice or truth for what happened to his family.

The British Government does not want to see the truth and has created the legacy Act to cover up the truth. It is important to say that the legacy Act seeks to allow people to get away with murder. That is exactly what it seeks to do. It is the son and heir of the cover-up and the collusion that happened between the British army, the RUC and a host of loyalist terrorist groups in the North of Ireland. It is a unilateral Act that undermines the rule of law and the human right to justice and makes the British Government an outlier internationally. It makes the British Government a rogue state internationally and this Act is heaping pain and suffering on those who have suffered so significantly at the hands of the British state for so long. The British try to distance themselves from the murders that happened in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s but the legacy Act locates that cover-up right at the heart of the British establishment. It puts the cover-up into Downing Street because now it is directly responsible for that cover-up in everybody's view at the moment.

I also think there is a second barrier to the search for truth about this issue. I believe the Irish State has been a barrier to the search for truth and justice about the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. I still cannot believe, this being the worse atrocity of the Troubles and which happened in this State - in our capital and in Monaghan - that the State's reactions to it were so feeble, so small and so reduced that there was no effort really in the State to try to get to the truth and justice in this regard. Incredibly, we had a situation where the Garda investigation was closed down after ten weeks. I am told that many of the survivors and the people who were there on the day never received a knock on the door from the Garda at the time or were never interviewed about what happened. For some people, the first knock on the door about this from any policemen was from Jon Boutcher four decades after the event had happened, that is, an English policeman was the first person to knock on the door of some of the families who lost so much at the time.

That is a scandal that points directly to this Government and I believe the Government needs to account for that. Incredibly, Garda files went missing. Forensics were not dealt with in the time they needed to be dealt with. Forensics were sent 11 days afterwards to the North of Ireland, which is an incredible situation and it is a scandal that the existence and whereabouts of those forensics were unknown to people who were meant to be in charge of the investigations.

I understand that when Bertie Ahern became Taoiseach, he block-booked a whole day to read the Garda files on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings and it took him one hour to look at the files that exist. That files had gone missing and there were so few files on this is an absolute scandal. That the authorities North and South did not work together is a scandal. I cannot believe that happened.

Looking back at this State's understanding of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the fact that they do not appear in the schoolbooks of this generation is also a scandal. It is as if the Dublin and Monaghan bombings are buried in the consciousness of official Ireland at the moment. Nearly 30 years of Ministers have gone by - Ministers for Justice have existed since the bombings. When the families went to meet some of those Ministers, their response was that if the families found any more information, they should come back to them. Those Ministers should have been the engine to seek information for those families and should have provided the energy to search for justice. The fact that we have words here tonight and many motions have been passed in the House without action speaks volumes to the people of Ireland and survivors of that horrendous day.

I believe there has been an airbrushing of this issue by official Ireland. I do not believe that official Ireland has pushed this issue with the British Government with the level of energy necessary to achieve justice. I ask the Government to focus on that. On funding, I mentioned that some families were left destitute by the bombings. Previous Governments pulled funding from the campaign group. Today, funding is achieved through the Pat Finucane Centre. The money must go North first and then come back South to the families, which shows a complete lack of logic.

I ask the Government to start to focus on this issue with the level of sincerity, effort and realism that it demands. This is a unique issue. It is a shocking human tragedy, where one state murdered the citizens of another. The responsibility of this State is to defend and protect its citizens and make sure justice is achieved. I ask the Government to provide not just words and go through the motions but to set itself a task of forcing the British Government to seek justice. I would go further than that. Given the fact that we have never properly investigated this, that the Government did not do its duty and that many families were left on their own to deal with this, I ask the Government to apologise to the families here tonight for not doing its job and supporting the families historically, not investigating what happened properly and leaving families to do all of this work by themselves.

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