Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I thank Sinn Féin for tabling this motion. I wish to warmly welcome the survivors, relatives and members of the Justice for the Forgotten group who are in the Public Gallery this evening. I had the privilege of meeting them today for the first time. I have to say that I am disappointed in myself and I apologise to them for not playing more of a role and linking in with them as a civilian and public representative. I hope I will be able to assist them in the future.

This was one of Ireland's worst atrocities. Three no-warning car bombs exploded in our city centre within the space of three minutes, injuring 258 people, killing 27 and impacting thousands. Barely 90 minutes later another car bomb detonated in Monaghan town, killing seven more people. This was the deadliest single day of the entire Troubles and yet despite evidence implicating known loyalist paramilitaries, no one was ever brought to justice for the attacks.

Now, almost 50 years later, a new documentary, "May-17-74: Anatomy of a Massacre", revisits the bombing, hearing from eyewitnesses, survivors and relatives of those killed in the blasts about their continuing campaign to get answers. I attended a screening of the documentary last Friday with my brother. He was 17 at the time and was coming home having worked his shift in An Post. He got caught between the Parnell Street and Talbot Street bombs but made it home okay. My mother was also in town that evening. She had passed Guineys and was going under Amiens Street bridge when the bomb went off. There was a bus strike that day and many people were walking towards Connolly Station to get trains home. I remember waiting at the window of my house to see if my mam would return home, not knowing if she would. Fortunately she did but many others did not.

I would like to thank the families, survivors and relatives as well as Joe Lee, the director, and Fergus Dowd, the producer of the documentary. Anybody who was born after 1970 should go and see that documentary. I was struck by the amount of people who knew people affected, who heard the bombs and whose families were affected and yet we forgot it. We absolutely forgot it over the last 50 years in many ways. The families and the Justice for the Forgotten group have been leading a long campaign. The film explains how the Garda investigation was mysteriously disbanded just seven weeks after the attacks, with crucial evidence sent North to the RUC being subsequently lost or destroyed or both, while the official inquest into the 34 deaths was never completed. It also examines the accusations of collusion between British intelligence and loyalists believed to be involved in perpetrating the attacks, including the notorious County Armagh-based UVF outfit, the Glenanne Gang, which included UDR and RUC personnel who went on to carry out other notorious Troubles-era killings including the Miami Showband massacre.

The documentary also focuses on the work of Justice for the Forgotten, a victims' group formed in 1996 by bereaved families and survivors to campaign for the truth. I was going to speak about some of the victims and family members who were in the documentary but the main point I want to make relates to the questions that Deputy Boyd Barrett raised, which the film makers also asked me to raise. In the Government's response to the motion the Tánaiste said that we mourn "the great loss suffered by the victims of the bombs on 17 May 1974", which is both good and welcome. He added:

We offer our humble acknowledgement of the obstacles you have overcome and the mountain you have climbed to get your campaign to where it is today. We recognise our own past shortcomings as a State and political system.

Our shortcomings should be dealt with now, so that we can go to the British state with our heads held high and demonstrate that we are transparent and doing what we can to find truth and justice. Why were the investigations in the Irish State closed after ten weeks? Garda files went missing. Forensic evidence was sent North after 11 days instead of 24 hours and it also went missing. Not one survivor or member of the bereaved families was interviewed by the Irish police in Dublin or Monaghan after the atrocity or to date. Jon Boutcher, who initially headed up Operation Denton, was the first policeman to knock on people's doors as part of his report, four decades later. The investigative material presented to the McEntee report has been blocked to the families' legal team under the Commissions of Investigation Act 2004, which stops family members and legal teams from seeing this material for 50 years. Why? Who made that decision? Why can the Government not intervene and say that this material should be released? At a minimum, this information should be released. Garda forensic technical expert Dr. James Donovan, who was sent some material to test by gardaí was not aware for 25 years that the material went North. A total of 29 Ministers for Justice were not willing to release Garda files to the families. Two particular Ministers, Nora Owen and Máire Geoghegan-Quinn , told the families at meetings to find information and if they found it, to come back to them. If we got our own house in order, we could then go and argue with the British Government and try to compel them to respond to our requests for answers.

See this speech in context