Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Paschal Donohoe.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State for coming in to respond to this important topic.

The purpose of this Adjournment matter is to query the response from the British Government in respect of the requests for release of the files on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. I am aware the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has said it will continue to talk about the issue, but that is not the same as releasing files. Those files have been in secure locations for the past 40 years. As stated recently in this House by me and others, if my country was accused of mass murder, the first thing I would say is that we had nothing to do with it, we have nothing to hide, we have information that might be of assistance and if we can be of assistance in identifying the perpetrators we will assist our neighbours. One cannot say on the one hand that we have improved relations with our neighbours, as we have in many areas in the past 40 years, while on the other hand they are accused of the largest killing in one day where collusion is suspected. Many reports, including the Barron report, have said it is most likely that the British security forces were involved. The question is whether it had sanction. Was it cleared at the highest level?

The next issue is the shootings that took place in Ballymurphy where ten unarmed civilians were shot in the space of 72 hours by the Parachute Regiment which, a few weeks later, went to Derry to carry out the killing of unarmed civilians there in a matter of minutes. What is the British Government doing in respect of seeking justice for those who were killed? I posed the question in the House on the day I raised the issue. In Ballymurphy a mother of eight was shot in the face and died. Those children of Joan Connolly are entitled to know who killed their mother. They are not seeking revenge. I fear justice would elude them but they are entitled to the truth.

The next issue on which I seek a response is on the military reaction force which was uncovered by a BBC Panorama documentary which highlighted the that this was an official undercover unit, sanctioned by the British army, which would go around west Belfast into Catholic areas and shoot civilians. Its intention was to shoot armed men at checkpoints but that did not always happen. Innocent civilians were killed. The former British Prime Minister, Mr. Ted Heath, at Downing Street was shown a memo. BBC Panorama uncovered the document which stated that the Prime Minister had asked that the next unit being constructed after the military reaction force should operate within the law, which is a clear admission that he was aware that the military reaction force had operated outside the law. As a Prime Minister being aware that his own army was acting outside the law in going around part of a territory to which he had a claim, one would imagine he should have taken action if it had not been sanctioned. Unfortunately, as we now suspect, it was sanctioned at the highest level.

The last issue is the most serious as it has consequences for citizens around the world. It concerns the RTE documentary about the hooded men and the case taken by the former Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, to Europe.

The Government pursued the British Government for the torture of those citizens, disputed or otherwise of Ireland. It won the initial court case, but on appeal the judgment that those hooded men were tortured was overturned. It was said that while the torture tactics employed - the use of stress, the hooding of the men, their subjection to white noise and interrogation for hours on end without a break - was a case of enhanced interrogation techniques, it was not torture. It decided that because the evidence provided by the British side in regard to the effects on the men in question was such that it could not be construed as torture. However, what was uncovered by the RTE documentary was that the effect was traumatic. Lives were shortened, suicides occurred and these men were never the same again after being detained and tortured by the British Government.

In light of this new evidence and of the fact that the Government is now entitled to revisit the case, will it do so? I ask this not because of the historic nature of the offences that occurred against these citizens but in view of the fact that the ruling made by that European Court of Human Rights is now used by states and democracies around the world. They say that because Ireland took this case, those forms of interrogation are legitimate, because a European court has said they did not have an adverse effect on the people subject to them. We now know, because of RTE's excellent report, that they had a hugely traumatic, debilitating and life-changing effect and that, by any measure, the forms of interrogation used were torture. It is beholden on the Government now, in light of this new evidence, to set the record straight, so that no democracy can use the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, which is false because of the evidence withheld from it by the British Government at the time.

I raise this not because of the historic nature of much of what I have talked about, but it is important the record is set straight on this issue.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Senator for raising this issue. As he is aware, the legacy of the past continues to seriously disrupt political and community life in Northern Ireland. The Government is committed to playing an active and constructive role in dealing with the issues, including through raising relevant matters with counterparts in the British Government.
The Government continues to support the all-party Dáil motions of July 2008 and May 2011 urging the British Government to allow access by an independent international judicial figure to all original documents in its possession relating to the Dublin-Monaghan bombings. In May 2014, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade raised this matter with Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Theresa Villiers, who undertook to reflect afresh on the Government's request to grant access to the relevant documents. The Government has expressed its solidarity with the victims and survivors of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and their families. The Taoiseach, the Minister of State with responsibility for development and I participated in memorial events on the 40th anniversary of the bombings and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade recently announced renewed funding for Justice for the Forgotten,a group which works with the families affected by the bombings, through that Department's reconciliation fund.
I would like to stress to Senator Daly that when I participated in that event, I was left in no doubt that the loss felt by those families is keen and acute and that their desire for justice and an investigation of this serious issue remains strong. This is one of the reasons the Taoiseach participated in the recent event and updated the families of the victims of the bombing on what the Government is doing and how it seeks to pursue the issues they have raised, which have been the subject of all-party motions in the Dáil.
Both the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade expressed their disappointment at the decision of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on 29 April 2014 not to appoint a Hillsborough-style panel to review the Ballymurphy cases the Senator raised. They have since raised the matter with Prime Minister Cameron and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, respectively. The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade informed the Secretary of State that, lacking agreement on a new model for contending with the past, a poorly functioning historical inquiries team and a severely backlogged coroner's court, the British Government should support reasonable and considered requests such as that made by the Ballymurphy families. The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade has stressed strongly to his counterpart our view that the British Government should support these reasonable and considered requests from the families that have suffered in respect of this terrible incident.
The House will be aware of the RTE "Prime Time" special programme on the "hooded men" case, which alleged that the British Government may have misled the European Court of Human Rights in the case taken by Ireland against the UK on the hooded men and other matters. In that case, the European Court of Human Rights considered an earlier report by the European Commission on Human Rights that the in-depth interrogation methods used by the British authorities in Northern Ireland amounted to torture. The court found that, while the interrogation methods were "inhuman and degrading", they did not amount to torture. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has been in contact with RTE and with the Pat Finucane Centre, on whose work much of the programme was based, and is currently reviewing archival records in order to fully assess the claims made by the "Prime Time" programme.
The House will also be aware of the issues raised in a BBC "Panorama" documentary in November 2013 concerning the alleged activities of an undercover British army unit, the military reaction force, MRF. The Northern Ireland Director of Public Prosecutions, Barra McGrory, has asked the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to investigate these allegations. The DPP has been provided with a detailed analysis by the PSNI of the comments made by three former soldiers in the course of the programme. In respect of the serious allegations surrounding the activities of the MRF, the PSNI is seeking to identify those who appeared on the programme and those who provided information to it.
Cases like Ballymurphy, the military reaction force and the Dublin-Monaghan bombings, the hooded men and other legacy cases, underline the need to find a comprehensive, fair and balanced framework for dealing with the past. If not dealt with, the past will continue to have a deeply corrosive effect on politics. In this regard, it is disappointing that Unionist parties withdrew last week from talks in Belfast on parades, flags and dealing with the legacy of the past. It is hoped that this is only a temporary setback and that all the parties will return to the talks as early as possible.

Mark Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I would like to thank the Minister of State for his reply and for the work of the Government in raising these issues on a continual basis. I can only agree that the talks on parades, flags and dealing with the past have collapsed.

Much of that has to do with the fact that the British Government does not seem to be engaged on this issue now. It is not acceptable that David Cameron met the leader of Sinn Féin for only the first time after being in office for three years. That is not serious engagement in trying to resolve these issues. I thank the Minister of State for his reply.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland said that the British Government will reflect on the issue. It is being implicated in mass murder, 34 people in one day. The Minister of State has attended the relevant events. The Taoiseach has a very strong view of what should be done about these bombings. If I had been accused, as the British Government has been, of implication in mass murder I would clear my name. I would give out all the files and say I have nothing to hide. If the British Government has nothing to hide why not give out the files. The research done by the Pat Finucane Centre in Dublin and Monaghan on the hooded men has found clear evidence that it is most likely implicated.

The hooded men are important. The use of enhanced interrogation techniques such as hooding, making people stand against a wall in stress positions for hours, subjecting them to white noise, sleep, food and water deprivation, are being used today. Democracies use them because the European Court of Human Rights said they did not have an adverse effect on those 14 citizens in Northern Ireland. The evidence the British Government withheld from the Irish Government and from the court shows quite clearly that it did. This country has an obligation to ensure that the record is set straight and that the countries using this technique stop and do not use the EU court ruling as justification for doing so.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Senator for raising these important issues. The breadth of issues raised emphasises the great importance of having a framework within which each of these issues can be dealt with. What should be emphasised is that, individually, the leaders of each political party in the North of Ireland have stressed the support they have for creating such a framework and dealing with many legacy issues and many we are now grappling with, such as flags and parades.

As recently as 3 July, when the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade spoke to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and on 6 July, when the Taoiseach spoke to the Prime Minister, Mr. Cameron, the Irish Government continued to emphasise the need for the talks on the legacy issues to resume as soon as possible because we understand that these issues, while they may be in the past, have a decisive influence on where we are now.

I saw how the families who have suffered as a result of the incidents I mentioned, feel. It also influences the politics of the present. We all in this House, party or non-party, are united in wanting to see the stability and peace that have been secured in the North of Ireland and the progress the communities there have made, firmly stabilised. We also want to see further progress towards a brighter future for everybody in the North of Ireland and for the island of the whole. I thank the Senator for raising very important issues and I am available at any point to come in and update the Seanad on where these various matters stand.