Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I draw Members' attention to a press conference that was held yesterday in the Europa Hotel in Belfast by several families which campaign for truth and justice in unresolved atrocities in the North. Many will be familiar to people. There is Loughinisland, the McGuirk's bar bombing, the Ballymurphy massacre, and there are many other campaigning families and survivors.They have come together to announce plans for a mass rally in Belfast on Sunday, 25 February, not only to remember their loved ones but also to try to progress the political resolution required and, in the first instance, to heed the call from the Lord Chief Justice in the North to release legacy inquest funding, which the British Government currently is refusing to do on the basis of what it deems a national security veto.

I have noted, acknowledged and appreciate the remarks of An Taoiseach and other senior Ministers with regard to their support for the families. I call on all of the parties and Independent Members to support them. I have spent the past four or five Friday mornings outside the Belfast High Court with the Loughinisland families, whose judicial review into the ombudsman investigation of the massacre there was a hugely strenuous and wearing period for them. All of these families are left in this limbo. We all have a duty and obligation to support their call for truth and justice in the first instance and collectively, if we do support them, within the context of the talks in the North to put it up to those who refuse and who seek to pull a curtain down on the litany of cases that now must go through the High Court in the absence of-----