Frances Black (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is welcome to the House and it is good to see him here. I also extend a warm welcome to John Finucane. I commend Senator Ó Donnghaile's motion calling for a public inquiry into the assassination of solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989, which I am delighted to have signed. It is great to see such cross-party co-operation.

As people have rightly said today, Geraldine Finucane is an inspiring, powerful and dignified woman. Geraldine and her family have been campaigning for over 30 years to obtain the full truth behind the brutal murder that took place in their home. It is important that we all support the family in their long campaign for an independent, open public inquiry.

The case for such an inquiry hardly needs to be restated. Suffice it to say that the agreement at Weston Park in 2001 between the British and Irish Governments and political parties in the North, the recommendations of Judge Peter Cory in 2003, the raising of the matter at the UN General Assembly and the repeated calls of human rights groups have together made the need for as open an inquiry as possible absolutely compelling.

I commend the Taoiseach for committing to engage with the British Prime Minister and for his support for a full inquiry. I welcome the letter from the four parties in the North supporting the holding of this inquiry but I am disappointed, like others, at the refusal of the DUP and the UUP to support this call. It is essential that a public inquiry is held to establish the full facts around the killing and it is only through such an inquiry that the level of state collusion can be established.

The reluctance of the British to allow this inquiry is understandable as the use of murder gangs is a well-known counter-insurgency tactic. The knowledge of this collusion is believed to have gone to the very top of the British Government and, according to Judge Cory, this was known to the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. There needs to be full disclosure of all the collusion between paramilitaries and the security forces in killings. Only when this is done will there be any hope of restoring confidence in the rule of law and the administration of justice. As the author Anne Cadwallader said: "Collusion does not resolve conflict - it fuels it." She outlines in her book, Lethal Allies, how over 120 people were killed in counties Armagh and Tyrone and that it is accepted that there was also collusion between the security forces and the UVF in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

The families who lost loved ones deserve to know if the state could have saved their lives. A 1994 Amnesty International report concluded:

Such collusion has existed at the level of the security forces and services, made possible by the apparent complacency, and complicity in this, of government officials.

The report also accuses the state in its reference to "the failure of the authorities to take effective measures to stop collusion [or] to bring appropriate sanctions against people who colluded". We must all do everything we can to ensure the truth is known about the actions of governments that claim to uphold the rule of law but are prepared to use murder and collusion to maintain their rule.

This motion calls for:

... the immediate establishment of a full, independent, public judicial inquiry into the murder of [well-known solicitor] Pat Finucane, as recommended by Judge Cory, which would enjoy the full co-operation of the Finucane family and command the respect and confidence of all of the people on the island of Ireland and all persons committed to democracy, human rights and the rule of law worldwide.

Only by the establishment of a public inquiry will we learn the truth about the state's involvement in this brutal murder.