Diarmuid Wilson (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like my colleagues, I welcome the families of the victims who are collectively known as "the disappeared" to the Gallery along with the representatives of the WAVE Trauma Centre. They are very welcome but should not have to be here.

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Harris, and I think this is the first opportunity I have had to welcome him as the new Minister for Justice. He is very welcome but, yet again, he should not have to be here either.

I commend my colleagues, Senators Blaney and McGreehan, for tabling this extremely important and emotive motion. I welcome the fact that 14 families of the 19 affected families have found their deceased loved ones. I look forward to the day that the remaining five families are reconciled with the bodies of their loved ones.

I commend the 19 families for coming together to form a group to pursue this issue - the location of their loved ones. I especially thank the 14 families who have already found their loved ones for sticking with this process while I am sure they were tempted, at some stages, to walk away and leave the other families to their own devices. I commend the 14 families for not doing that and for sticking together. I hope that we will get a final resolution to this horrific scene.The people who disappeared these victims denied them their lives. They denied their families a traditional way to say goodbye and a permanent graveside to visit. They denied their victims' loved ones the religious rites in which they believed. They denied the disappeared the respect any of us is entitled to when we pass on. They denied the families a grave in which their loved ones could lie beside other family members. They denied the families a permanent place to which they could always go to say goodbye.

We could all jump up and down and start hurling abuse at Sinn Féin and the Irish National Liberation Army, INLA, but that will achieve nothing. While it is important that we keep raising this issue at a political level, we need to go a step further and do so very strongly. I appeal to anybody with any information about where the other five victims are located to come forward. None of us is getting any younger. The people involved who are still alive are not young men or women. If there is anybody who can use his or her good office to talk to people who have knowledge about the location of these bodies, I beg him or her to use that influence and talk to those people.

The motion is not using this issue for political purposes. I want to make that clear. Using this matter as a political tool will not help to find the bodies. It is by dialogue and communication that we will do so. Let us put all our efforts into doing that. Let us work to see these five families getting the peace they so richly deserve. When we met with the victims' families earlier today, they said they never thought looking forward to a funeral would give them such peace. I will never forget that comment.

Reference was made to the appointment of Sir Kenneth Bloomfield and former Tánaiste John Wilson by both Governments in June 1999. I remember talking to Mr. Wilson around that time and him saying that he found it extremely difficult to deal with the situation. He was very emotional about it. Can any of us imagine what the families have gone through over all these years? If there is anybody out there who can help, let us talk quietly and get this dealt with once and for all.