I welcome Ms Bernie McNally, chairperson, Justice for the Forgotten; Mr. Greg O'Neill, solicitor; Mr. Cormac Ó Dúlacháin, senior counsel; and Ms Margaret Urwin, secretary, Justice for the Forgotten. You are all very welcome here today to make the submission on module 5 of the hearings of the sub-committee on the Barron report. Before you begin, I remind you that while Members of the Oireachtas and members of the sub-committee enjoy parliamentary privilege, that same privileged does not apply to you. You have your legal representatives who will have informed you of this. Mr. Ó Dúlacháin, will you commence, please?
Public Hearings on the Barron Report.
Mr. Cormac Ó Dúlacháin
Thank you, Chairman. As you see, we are here with Bernie McNally, chairperson, Justice for the Forgotten; Margaret Urwin who has been secretary of Justice for the Forgotten for many years, and a number of our former chairpersons in the audience this morning.
What we propose to do this morning is spend about a half an hour setting out our stall in relation to what requires further inquiry, the practicalities of such an inquiry and how it can be pursued. I am going to speak for a little while in relation to those matters. To assist the committee, Mr. O'Neill is going to look at a number of particular cases - a small selection of special circumstances - for the purposes of illustration. Ms Urwin is going to conclude with a number of observations and comparisons with the position adopted by our Department of Foreign Affairs when advocating a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane in 1999. Those observations are pertinent to what this committee is entrusted with at present.
As an aside, there is one point of information I would like to bring to the committee's attention, that is, in relation to Lieutenant Colonel Nigel Wylde. Various people in referring to him have made the point that he was an army ordnance disposal officer in Belfast in the summer of 1974 and arrived after the Dublin-Monaghan bombings. His experience in Northern Ireland is not limited to that. He served, we believe, as an intelligence officer in Armagh in 1976 and in that capacity would be aware of many of the matters that are referred to in the Barron report and the background to them. It is not a matter we have addressed with him because we retained him as an expert witness to deal with a matter of expertise, that is, particularly the area of explosives. He has clearly indicated to us that he is not in a position to act as an expert witness in any other capacity but in so far as his observations and conclusions are in relation to matters relating to explosives, they are drawn from a much broader background than simply a question of three months spent in Belfast in the summer of 1974. I simply want to outline that as a point of information for the committee.
Let me return to an overview of why we are here today. We have sat back over the past number of weeks. You have seen members of Justice for the Forgotten on the opening day come before you. We have had Garret FitzGerald, Patrick Cooney, Seán Donlon, the Garda Commissioner and Garda officers. We have had the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and officials of his Department. We have had the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces and officials of the Department of Defence. We have had explosives staff from the Department of Defence. We have had Dr. Donovan and Dr. Sheila Willis from the State forensic laboratory. We have had Nigel Wylde, Colin Wallace, the Pat Finucane Centre and others.
We, in this process, have sat passively listening but not engaging. That at times has been a frustrating experience, at times a fascinating experience and at times an infuriating experience because in essence we were in a forum where one could conduct a public inquiry, where people were present, where people could be questioned but where the function of this committee was not to conduct an inquiry and certainly where we had no inquiry rights.
The issue arose that an inquiry would require elaboration, probing and teasing out. It has focused our minds in some respects on what this sub-committee has been trying to do. Conscientiously, the sub-committee has set about asking a lot of questions and reading a lot of material. The question arises as to why this has been going on.
Two things have been happening. First, the committee obviously has to ask an awful lot of questions to understand the subject matter. It is being asked to make a judgment on what is to follow so it has to have an understanding of the subject matter. The questioning on a subject matter brings the committee very close to bordering upon an inquiry itself. By the very nature of asking questions, one's innate curiosity draws one deeper and deeper into the factual detail, and it is very hard to stand back and not become engaged in judging the subject matter itself.
We understand the function of this sub-committee in that people have come before it and been questioned in order to assist the sub-committee in understanding the subject matter. We do not see it as our position to prove anything to this sub-committee. In 1995, members of Justice for the Forgotten met with the then Minister for Justice, Nora Owen, and at the conclusion the Minister addressed the members of the group by asking that if they find any evidence, to please bring it forward. It is not the obligation of victims to be investigators. It is not our obligation, as their advocates, to come here and prove that there is collusion or to prove this or that.
What we have set about doing is assembling the material to show that a very serious issue warrants consideration. In so far as we are engaging with the committee, we are trying, at one level, not to get drawn too deeply into the details because that requires the committee having various reports opened to it and hearing more and more witnesses. The matter thus grows bigger and bigger. It is a question of information being given to this committee so that it best understands the subject matter.
At times in the past few weeks we have also sensed that we have been drawn into a game of linguistic gymnastics, as if words such as "assessment," "addressed," "terms of reference," "lessons to be learned," "required," and "fruitful" have in themselves become more important than the subject matter and the task at hand. The horror of what occurred in Dublin and Monaghan on 17 May 1974 can at times get lost in that language. In an attempt to simplify it, we see the sub-committee's task as having to address a number of matters. First, does the Barron report bring finality? In essence, does it bring closure?
The questions that follow are in some respects simple. Are there genuine issues to investigate? Are there serious issues that need to be pursued on foot of the Barron report? We then move on to an important area in which political judgment has to be exercised. In the scale of things, how grave are these issues? What is serious to one person is not as serious to someone else, and a judgment has to be made in terms of the gravity of this issue.
Then there are other questions that have taxed the sub-committee's mind. Are these issues amenable to further inquiry? The sub-committee can be satisfied that there are genuine concerns and that they are of the most serious and grave nature, but it then has to consider whether they can be inquired into.
It must then be asked at what cost is such an inquiry to be pursued? I do not mean cost simply in financial terms. There is a political judgment in relation to cost. What are the political implications of not pursuing this? What are the political implications of pursuing it? Cost is more than simply money.
In ways, the most important days for us have been those when we listened to the deliberations of the sub-committee because as we see it, our duty is to try to address the matters that are giving rise to concerns among the members of the sub-committee, including the questions they are asking. The questions that seem to be coming to the forefront include the question as to whether Mr. Justice Barron has done enough; why take more action after 30 years; what more will be achieved; can it be done and is not the co-operation of the British Government essential. Other factors that play into the political dynamic have been referred to, such as tribunal fatigue, costs, the question of it becoming a lawyers' game; a floodgate; why is this case more important than other cases; why are 34 deaths more important than one death. There are other issues, such as the fact that with the best will in the world, all the relevant parties are dead and will this not make further inquiry impossible? These are the strands we have been sensing in the questioning that has been raised.
We first became involved in 1996 as lawyers, the members of Justice for the Forgotten having been together for a number of years before that, with Margaret Urwin having been secretary for a few years of the campaign. Our concern is to ascertain whether the relatives are entitled to a verdict on who killed and maimed their loved ones and, in respect of those who were physically injured, who injured them.
The second question is why were the killers not pursued and brought to justice? The language can be re-framed and reconstructed in a hundred different ways, but we believe that two issues should be the central focus of a public inquiry. The first is what happened to the Garda investigation and why? The second is, having gone through the Barron process and gathered information, who were the perpetrators and did the UK security forces collude with them?
Some material, information and questions have been answered, but we have repeatedly made the point that this has not been done in a comprehensive fashion, not in a sense that one can regard it as a final report to the relatives, as bringing about closure. There is no sense that we as lawyers feel we can present the Barron report to the members of Justice for the Forgotten as the response of the State on the basis that this is all they are entitled to know and that they are not entitled to a further inquiry. Essentially, the choice is to present them with the Barron report and no more. If so, the files from the inquiry will be placed in the National Archives and locked away for 30 years or probably, in the interests of national security, for 50 or 100 years. We are at a crossroads. It is either the end as far as the official State response is concerned and there is to be no further inquiry, or there is more to be done.
We are not afraid to criticise the Barron report or the Barron process. This criticism is not necessarily a personal criticism. However, to us the report is, in some respects, one person's journey through a mass of material with no meaningful assistance. Mr. Justice Barron was effectively left to his own devices with very little resources to travel through whatever material he could amass and others could bring to him and to try to assess it. He did it without any clear guidance or definition of what constitutes collusion, without a method of assessing collusion and no structure to weigh up different forms of evidence. There is no structure. As one looks at the report how does one measures journalist sources and journalistic information with other information and how to you grade and assess it?
In some respects Mr. Justice Cory was given a far simpler task because he had a very defined objective, namely, was he presented with sufficient material to justify a public inquiry. It was not that he had to go into every nook and cranny and dot every "i" and cross every "t"; he had to consider if there was sufficient material to give rise to alarm to the effect that this is a very significant matter of public concern that has to be inquired into. In some respects, Mr. Justice Cory benefited from a far more focused and purposeful inquiry.
What did the Barron process lack? It lacked public probing. It is important to understand what public probing is about. When evidence, material and information is presented for public probing it is tested, clarified, elaborated and illuminated. It entails a vigorous and informed engagement. That is self evident in terms of what the sub-committee has been doing. If this was a sub-committee consisting of a sole chairperson with no members it must be asked how effective would be the questioning? The sub-committee has shown that there is an issue of intellectual engagement. A matter such as this cannot be left for one person to sift through for one, two or three years and expect to get the product to which the public is entitled.
The process of public probing is not about lawyers playing games in courtrooms, grand standing or oratory, it is the surgery that is applied to a problem to test and assess it so that one ends up with an effective assessment and a process of judgment. None of that occurred within the Barron process. The end result is unsatisfactory. The report contains a wealth of detail but it does not result in a comprehensive analysis and conclusion.
Mr. Donlon put it in essence in one respect when he said that the issue is one of national interest and national sovereignty. In many respects we have a membership card in the United Nations. We signed a European Convention on Human Rights under the Council of Europe because we regarded ourselves as a nation. Mr. Donlon has focused on the public issue involved here, broader than simply this group of victims. I understand Mr. O'Neill will avert to this in a few moments, namely, that the issues underlying the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and the threats arising from them were of far greater significance than any of us have appreciated.
Why a public inquiry? The reason for a public inquiry is that there is no other means available to the relatives. There is nowhere else they can effectively go. There is no ongoing criminal investigation into collusion. There was never a Garda investigation into collusion and there is no indication that this will ever take place.
For all its faults, the Stevens inquiry has not been an inquiry but a criminal investigation into collusion that has been pursued in Northern Ireland for 12 years with the object of gathering information and evidence for use and presentation in criminal trials. It has been extraordinary to watch Stevens because it has welded both a public reporting element, or at the very least reporting to the British Government, but it has essentially been driven by a police force and by police officers. That has never occurred here. It was never even contemplated at the outset of the investigation into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings that the concept or the issue of collusion would from any part of that investigation.
There is no prospect for personal actions by these relatives against the British Government. They cannot sue in this jurisdiction. There is no state right of complaint by the Irish Government to the European Court of Human Rights. What was available in the 1970s by way of the Irish Government complaint no longer exists. There is no forum for international adjudication so when we come back here we are effectively saying that these citizens of this State can only turn to their Parliament and ask the Parliament to exercise its power to establish a public inquiry.
What is there for a public inquiry? We made the point in the submission but I do not want to go too much into it. First, one starts with the information and material gathered by Mr. Justice Barron. That is a launching pad for the interrogative process. The information that already exists can be taken further. It can be studied, researched, analysed and put through a critical process. Second, the process of gathering information is ongoing and I do not think anyone could be but in awe of what the Pat Finucane Centre has achieved as an NGO since 1999. Effectively, Paul O'Connor and Joanna Keenan, through their office, not as high paid lawyers but as an NGO, have been gathering evidence on the ground. That, in a way, is a signpost for what can be achieved and begs the question: what more can be achieved by an effective inquiry? From our point of view, there is a road in terms of investigation yet to be travelled and a roadblock should not be put on that road. One cannot decide at this stage, having got as far as the Barron report, to suddenly block that road and say, "We will travel it no further."
I will illustrate, as an aside, what investigations are ongoing. There is a reference in the Barron report to an incident at Dublin docks. I think the sub-committee might be familiar with it. It concerns a British Army officer. The Barron report contains no detail in that regard. There is a military army report about it and there is a note somewhere in the Garda file about the registration being checked. Mr. Justice Barron has taken it that the Garda established that the registration number had never been issued. No one has ever checked in the vehicles registration office in Swanley whether that is so or not. Our initial indications are that it may not be so. The evidence that appears on the Garda file is itself being investigated by us and we are waiting for written confirmation of what exactly was the status of that vehicle. That is just one small example.
Arising from the same incident, for the past two weeks, intensive inquiries have been conducted by the harbour police and the Dublin Port Company to establish whether what is on their files from 1974 related to that particular incident. They are not sure whether they will or will not uncover anything but no one ever asked them. In a similar fashion, there is a whole range of inquiries to be made with the Irish Prison Service regarding the connections recorded in regard to loyalists who were in prison in Mountjoy in terms of communications to them from visitors and correspondence from and to them. That information has never been properly assembled or gathered. One gets a sense that small areas of the Barron report lead on to further inquiries, which will either close an issue or raise an issue but very basic facts have not been tested and closed off.
I think it is a very legitimate question to ask why you call an inquiry into something that happened 30 years ago. I think it was answered by the Dáil when it set up a tribunal of inquiry into abuse in the residential institutions of the State which is inquiring back into the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. No one said this would open a floodgate; no one said we would not face as a State and address the 10,000, 15,000 or 20,000 people who would come forward and say, "We were not dealt with properly."
At a very simple level, the Revenue Commissioners are conducting, this year, an investigation into foreign accounts held in the Isle of Man. Their cut-off date is 1974. They are willing to look back 30 years in pursuit of taxes, in pursuit of financial accounts lodged in the Isle of Man. The planning tribunal has gone back to 1985.
The criminal investigation into the Lockerbie bombing took 12 years to get to trial. On behalf of their citizens, the British Government and the American Government were willing to go to the United Nations, were willing to get United Nations resolutions, were willing to impose economic embargoes and were willing to enter into legal agreements with the Netherlands for the construction of a camp site and for the declaration of that camp to be part of Scottish territory. The British Government was unwilling to accept any impediment or obstacle to the pursuit of those involved in the Lockerbie bombing.
In relation to the Air India plane that was bombed off the coast of west Cork in 1986, it took 17 years of criminal investigation to get to a trial; that trial opened in Vancouver last July. Nowhere did anyone say, "Stop; it is not worth it; do not pursue it".
There is another issue in relation to the figure of 30 years. It took until 1998, effectively, to get the peace process on the road. At any stage up to 1998, what were the prospects, in that political environment, for establishing a tribunal of inquiry into these matters? What was the political reality of embarking upon such an inquiry without someone using it for some other political motive or political end?
Why we are here today is part of the conclusion to the conflict. It is part of the menu of the Good Friday Agreement; it is part of the commitment that was given in that Agreement to address the needs of relatives. It is not the relatives' and victims' fault that the 20 year period from 1974 to 1994 was turned into a cycle of violence and counter-violence. There is a very special reason 30 years is not a reason to say no now, that is, the political circumstances which have prevented this matter from being properly dealt with over the past 30 years. Time has to be judged in that context.
This inquiry is part of a process of peace-building. It is part of the peace-building agenda. How can you build peace if you do not know the sources of past violence, if you do not understand the cycle of violence, the causes of violence and where it emanated from?
How can one build peace if one does not know the truth about the past? We know the truth about the IRA, the UDA and the UVF but there are other elements of that truth that are essential to peace building. There is another element when we come to talk about cost. How much money is there for making peace? There seems to be any amount of money for making war. On the scale of things, one can spend any amount on war machinery and nothing on peace machinery. There is a value judgment when it comes to considering the cost factors. I want to conclude on this point - that this inquiry process has to be seen as a part of peace making. I would now like to hand over to Mr. Greg O'Neill.
Mr. Greg O’Neill
This is the first time in this process that I have addressed the sub-committee, apart from saying "Good morning". I want to take the opportunity of expressing my great sense of honour in appearing here, representing as I do the victims of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and their families. Mr. Cormac Ó Dúlacháin has indicated a moral and political basis for an inquiry. He has touched on the issues of what might be directing our minds against recommending an inquiry.
It must be asked what is there to fear in a public inquiry? It is a practical question, which possibly other contributors have not taken on, but we are here to take it on and take on the practicalities with which politicians and public representatives have to deal in the real world. I suppose one fear is that it will end up as an endless process of inquiry into the troubles, with no end in sight, and that we will be opening a Pandora's box.
Looking at the troubles in that general, generic sense, in a superficial way or in a way born of weariness of witnessing their unfolding over the past 30 years, would be a very easy approach to take. One can look at the troubles and all these different incidents and atrocities as forming some kind of miasma, a fog - something we have escaped from largely since the Good Friday Agreement, and who wants to go back there again?
Unfortunately, however, that is not history or reality because what we are looking into is simply a substantial and nasty crime, perpetrated against the people of this city, the people of Monaghan and the people of Ireland as a whole. It is also a crime which is limited and linked to other specific crimes. A public inquiry will not be an investigation of the troubles; it is an investigation of crimes which were not solved, among the many crimes committed in the name of nationalism or loyalism, the rights of the British in Ireland or the rights of the Irish to Ireland, over the past 30 years.
It is also an investigation into crime linked to other crimes in which there is a grave suspicion of collusion - that is, that those who were given the authority, under the rule of law, to uphold the law, broke the law in the most dastardly fashion one can imagine. Not only did they do that, but they waged an act of war against the citizens of this State by exploding no-warning car bombs calculated to take as much human life as possible. There is nothing of which I can conceive that is more serious and more meritorious of a public inquiry than that.
I am 25 years practising as a solicitor and a great deal of that time of my career has been spent on the defence side. I have never prosecuted a criminal case so I find myself in a somewhat unusual position here, acting in a sense as a prosecutor. However, it is not that difficult because my life has been spent, to a large degree, in attacking and uncovering miscarriages of justice and they take a long time. Only in one recent instance was a miscarriage of justice more or less identified within a matter of weeks or months. Miscarriages of justice are not accidents. They happen because the State apparatus fails to supply to the court the evidence which could leave it open to a court to acquit someone. They usually take a long number of years to uncover and they are damned hard to establish.
The Dublin and Monaghan bombings is a miscarriage of justice because the bombings were not properly investigated. The evidence that could have led to those being brought to justice was not pursued.
In a sense the sub-committee is a court of appeal. Unlike in the cases of the Birmingham Six after 16 years, Nicky Kelly after 12 or any of the other people who I have represented, the sub-committee is coming to this after 30 years and we are saying that it must open this box, must look at the appalling vista and must deal with it.
In so far as the State failed the families, it failed the Reaveys, the O'Dowds, the two men murdered in Altnamackan and their families. It failed all the people that these individuals went on to murder with impunity. That is an unpleasant and harsh thing to say.
I have a lot of time for Mr. Cooney's difficulties with the Barron report because he and his Government have been left with a cloud over their heads. They did not care. They did not take the necessary steps. They were told certain things afterwards but as far as they were aware the Garda was told all these things. I am inclined to believe them, but whether I believe them or not is neither here nor there. The point is they might be able to plead some ignorance but this Parliament cannot because never has the issue of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings been laid out with more graphic detail before any committee of parliamentarians than it has now. The sub-committee has the benefit of the Barron report.
The Barron process involved addressing and assessing. Mr. Justice Barron addressed it but he only made a few assessments. An assessment is a judgment, a calculation involving a reading of it and drawing conclusions from it. He did not have the equipment to make the assessments in all of the areas he could have, but he did make some assessments which are very valuable and I will go back to them.
The issue of collusion is not something beyond the ken of this State to inquire into on its own, even without British involvement. In any event, to put up one's hands and say, "As a sovereign Parliament in a sovereign State, we cannot investigate this if those we suspect of harbouring the colluders do not co-operate," is to give the last word to a foreign Government over events that happened within a sovereign state.
I always regarded myself as a patriotic Irishman. As someone who has lived through the Troubles, I was often disgusted and sickened by the violence that was perpetrated on this island for political purposes. I never felt ashamed of being Irish but if in a free democracy our Parliament, Government and State abdicates its responsibilities to its citizens, I think I would feel very ashamed.
Getting back to the issues that we have to investigate, that is, a series of crimes, how practical is it for an investigation to be carried out in this State into crimes carried out in Northern Ireland or planned in Northern Ireland and carried out in this State? Margaret Urwin, Cormac Ó Dúlacháin and I engaged with the Barron commission to carry out certain investigative work over a period of three years, not constantly working over three years but in modules of time. We looked at certain incidents and we examined certain events, and I hope to illustrate what it is possible to do when you do not have the resources but have the determination, when you do not have the legal powers but have the will to find out. I also hope to touch upon the issues which Cormac has raised about the potential for the damage that could have been done to the people of Ireland by allowing this gang to run riot.
I will start with an incident which has almost a humorous undertone but was a very serious incident. During the 1970s there was a spate of train hijackings in Northern Ireland carried out by republicans. In many instances bombs were put on the trains and they were set running into towns to cause massive disruption and terror. There was an incident in 1974 involving the hijacking of a train on the Border and the alleged placing of a bomb on that train. The crew were not taken off the train, the deadman's handle was not disconnected and the train was sent on its way into the town of Portadown. A folklore grew up about that incident because when the train got to Obins Street, it overturned and dangled over the bridge at Obins Street, on top of a Nationalist enclave in a largely loyalist town. The folklore was that a certain ammunitions technical officer in charge of the field brigade area for mid-Ulster had deliberately derailed the train so as to upend the train down on top of the hapless inhabitants of the houses underneath or, on the other hand, that it was a device to clear out the inhabitants of the houses in this Nationalist area so that the British army could carry out a search for ammunition, guns or information about republicans.
When we carried out an investigation into that incident, which Judge Barron felt unable to do because it was a cross-Border matter and he was not going to get co-operation from the RUC-PNSI at the time, we discovered that this story was a myth. The IRA had hijacked the train but the train had been derailed due to the actions of the signal man who had refused to leave the box. The train was derailed in an attempt to save life rather than to endanger it or for any other spurious security reason. The ATO was on the scene not to plant a bomb on the line at Portadown but because he had been told a bomb had been put on board at the Border by the IRA.
It took some weeks for us to do that. It involved interviewing the signal man who is in his 80s and going through public records and private records of individuals, going through engineering reports and visiting the Railways Records Society of Ireland, for example - all kind of obvious places you would think about to look at something which was not investigated thoroughly at the time and could not be investigated by Judge Barron. We exploded a myth which you will find referred to in many, many books about the Troubles.
That leads me on to another issue, that is, the question of the attack on the railway line at Ballinrath near Sallins. That happened in June 1975. The hijacking of trains continued by Republicans in Northern Ireland and then in June 1975 there was an attack made on the railway line under the bridge at Ballinrath in County Kildare. A section of the up-line and down-line was surgically removed by a very professional explosive device. At the same time a local man who came across these people planting this bomb was murdered. His murder is unsolved. The people who carried out the attack on Ballinrath intended to cause massive loss of life. The man who detonated the explosion has not been identified but through our inquiries we understand that he only exploded two other bombs throughout the 1970s, one was in Belfast the day before and the other was some months later when two UVF men lost their lives because the timing mechanism detonated the bomb prematurely. The timing mechanism was faulty too in Ballinrath by three minutes. Had it not been, a train carrying some hundreds of people would have been derailed and there would inevitably have been a massive loss of life.
The attack on Ballinrath is unsolved. We went to the engineering section of CIE and discovered what the engineering of the actual attack was, we got the photographs and were able to have that attack assessed by an expert. Judge Barron has yet to report on that incident. This is, if you like, the type of detective work, with a small "d", that can be done and the kinds of technical information and evidence that can be assembled, if you wanted to do it.
It also pointed out, strangely enough, a lack of expertise on the part of loyalists, if the Ballinrath attack can be attributed to loyalists alone. The first explosion was probably a dry run to see if it worked, the second one was caused by the failed timing mechanism in Ballinrath and the third the failed timing mechanism in Macosquin in Derry some months later when two UVF volunteers were blown up. If you look at that, then you will look at what happened in Dublin and Monaghan.
I will pass on that to another incident which was referred to by one of the Irish Army presenters, I think Lieutenant Colonel Kellegher. When referring to the case that the Dublin-Monaghan bombings were not unique or that loyalists had the capacity to detonate bombs, he referred to a bomb attack that was frustrated in Clones on 24 June 1974. He definitively stated that it was aloyalist bomb attack, not a Republican attack. It does seem strange because his views seem to be at odds with the Irish Army ordnance officer who dealt with the bomb at the time and his view is at odds with the leading Garda officer who reported the incident at the time. In fact, all of the people who were involved in investigating that incident at the time were of the view that it was a republican bomb and it was a stunt, a hoax to embarrass the Garda and to show up the republicans who were involved in an earlier attempt to defuse the bomb, which was successful, as protectors of the local community. A lot of what is being asked for to inquire into can be resolved. This is not a miasma, this is not mysterious. The issues we are asking for a public inquiry into can be defined, focused and demystified.
Yesterday our friends in the Pat Finucane Centre dealt with, if you like, what they have been able to discover and put together in terms of ballistics reports connecting the perpetrators of the murder triangle murders with the Dublin Monaghan bombings. We did, some time ago, an analysis of the Rock Bar trial in two ways and it connects to my opening remarks. What is an inquiry looking into? It is looking into the Garda investigation and it is also looking into the issue of collusion and, by looking into both and by looking into connected crimes, you can show that collusion can be investigated and that it can be established.
It is our view that the Rock Bar case presents the most compelling evidence for the existence of systemic collusion by the security forces in Northern Ireland into crimes which are connected to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings through the combination and permutations of the perpetrators suspected of involvement and through the identification in terms of the evidence of people like Colin Wallace, of people who were actual members of the security forces in Northern Ireland or were agents of the security forces in Northern Ireland, these groups having being infiltrated by military intelligence.
One of the few assessments made by Judge Barron in his report, to which I said I would return, was his assessment of the evidence of John Weir. He said that John Weir's evidence had to be treated and considered with the utmost seriousness. As was pointed out earlier, that presupposes that there is going to be some forum to consider and assess his evidence. We suggest that John Weir's evidence is compelling and is to be treated with the utmost seriousness. He implicated a number of members of the Armagh special patrol group in terrorist activities. He implicated, first, himself and a number of named individuals - Gary Armstrong, Ian Mitchell, William McCaughey, Laurence McClure, David Wilson and William Scott. The people I have named have all been convicted of terrorist or terrorist-related offences.
In 1978 William McCaughey made further statements implicating fellow members of the RUC special patrol group. Arising from those confessions, investigations were initiated into the following incidents: the attack on Donnelly's Bar, Silverbridge, in 1975, the gun and bomb attack on the Rock Bar in June 1976, the murder of William Strathearn in 1977, the kidnapping of Fr. Murphy in June 1978 and the find of guns and explosives at Mitchell's farm in December 1978. We know that these incidents are interlinked involving, as I have said, permutations of the same gang and we know that the incidents have given rise to criminal charges and are only a sample of the incidents that actually took place.
The issue arises as to whether the trials were managed or designed in a way to obscure the fact that RUC members were working with loyalists. The inter-relationship between these events was not explored at the trials.
In relation to Silverbridge, charges were brought against Lily Shields and Laurence McClure. These charges were dropped in questionable circumstances. It is to be noted that by dropping the charges relating to the Silverbridge attack, the first incident that results is the gun and bomb attack on the Rock Bar in June 1976. This facilitated the claim by those charged that they were motivated to carry out these actions by the atrocities perpetrated by republicans in Kingsmill.
The effect of dropping the charges against Laurence McClure and Gary Armstrong was that each of them came before the court on one charge only. We believe that may have been orchestrated so that, in due course, a suspended sentence could be handed down. In addition to the case of Laurence McClure,he avoided coming before the courts in relation to Silverbridge, where three people had been murdered.
The late Lord Chief Justice Lowrie dealt with the following trials: 16 June 1980, the Strathearn murder; 30 June 1980, the Fr. Murphy kidnapping; 30 June 1980, the Rock Bar attack, and 30 June 1980, the charges against James Mitchell of Glenanne with possession of weapons and ammunition. Looked at in this sequence, it is clear that Lord Chief Justice Lowrie was aware from 16 June 1980 that two members of the RUCm who had been members of the special patrol group in Armagh had been involved in the murder of an innocent Catholic. The Lord Chief Justice was also aware that this murder had also involved two loyalists who were not before the court for what were stated to be operational reasons. These were Robin Jackson andR. J. Kerr.
When the Fr. Murphy kidnapping case came before the Lord Chief Justice on the same day as the Rock Bar and James Mitchell cases, again it was the RUC officers who were members of the special patrol group in Armagh who were before the court - in this case, McCaughey and Armstrong. When the Lord Chief Justice proceeded to the Rock Bar trial, again before the court were RUC officers who were members of the special patrol group in Armagh. In this case McCaughey and the three others, Laurence McClure, Ian Wilson and David Mitchell, were charged with the Rock Bar attack. By the time Lord Lowrie dealt with the Rock Bar incident he knew: the facts relating to the Strathearn murder case, as this was contested and evidence called and statements admitted; that McCaughey was guilty of involvement in three incidents; that McCaughey was a former member of the RUC special patrol group in Armagh, and that between the three incidents, five other members of the RUC special patrol group in Armagh were involved.
Lord Lowrie is deceased. Even so——
Mr. O’Neill
This is a matter of record. I am not drawing any inferences. I am just reading out what he knew.
What piece of paper have you got? We do not seem to have——
Mr. O’Neill
It is one of our reports. I will disseminate it afterwards. I did not have time to dig it out and disseminate it before we started. I will give a copy to every member of the committee afterwards.
I ask you to be careful, not only regarding living people but also people who are dead. We do not want to infer guilt or innocence.
Mr. O’Neill
It is not my intention to draw any aspersions. I am simply stating what was known in the criminal justice system.
You should just refer to the criminal justice system rather than specific cases.
Mr. O’Neill
Very good.
Thank you. I intend no offence. This marker has been set down before every person who has appeared here.
Mr. O’Neill
I will skip over this passage: "At the end of these trials, four members of the RUC, each charged with involvement in only one incident, got suspended sentences."
Will you repeat that, please?
Mr. O’Neill
"At the end of these trials, four members of the RUC, each charged with involvement in only one incident, [which involved an attempt on the life of an individual] got suspended sentences." Mr. Armstrong got a two-year suspended sentence, Mr. McLure got a two-year suspended sentence, Mr. Mitchell a two-year suspended sentence, and Mr. Wilson a one-year suspended sentence.
It would help very much if we got a copy of this because then we would be better able to go through it.
Mr. O’Neill
I will give that out as soon as I am——
We are getting it.
Mr. O’Neill
Thank you. The Rock Bar trial and the related trials are very important. They concern events with links to individuals, places and activities, which, it is alleged, are connected with the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. They are also, in like manner, connected to the bombings in Dundalk and Castleblaney. In so far as there is a conspiracy by the RUC and the DPP, and ultimately the courts, to keep secret the full extent of collusion and conspiracy involving the security forces and loyalists, then the conspiracy extended to preventing the detection and prosecution of persons in Northern Ireland who were responsible for murders in this State.
The fact that these four trials took place indicates that there is a significant body of documentation in the possession of the authorities in Northern Ireland. We are not talking here about MI5 or MI6 files, and we doubt, in fact, whether one will find any evidence of collusion in such files, other than if files are kept on agents. The fingerprints for collusion are to be found in the police files and these are available.
An examination of the transcript of the Rock Bar trial discloses the following: that the presiding judge had before him a book of evidence; the book of evidence was divided into a number of pages and exhibits; that there was scientific evidence about the bomb device and explosives; there was a statement from the army technical officer; there was a ballistics report on the shots in the premises; there were photographs of damage done to the car; there was a medical report on the injuries sustained by Michael McGrath; that there was a statement of the owner of the Mini car stolen from Market Street, Armagh; that there were statements from all four accused.
You are not making an accusation against the presiding judge.
Mr. O’Neill
No. I am just pointing out that the wealth of material the Pat Finucane Centre and Justice for the Forgotten were able to discover was available on the public record. Collusion can be ascertained, if one wants to look, and one does not have to dig too deeply - much of it is on the public record.
Finally, I will pass briefly to a further matter, which is the car bomb explosion in Castleblaney on 7 March 1976. I will outline again that while we are dealing with 34 deaths, if the bus parked at the bottom of Kildare Street, which was full of children from Letterkenny on a tour visiting the Dáil and the National Gallery, had been parked any closer to where the bomb was detonated, we might be talking about 84 deaths, not 34. The same applies to the Castleblaney bombing. One man was murdered in that bombing, a Mr. Mohan. He was standing near the bus-stop in Castleblaney outside the Three Star Inn in Main Street when the car bomb exploded. It is our view that that bomb was designed to explode at a time when the Ulsterbus bus from Derry would be stopped, which usually would be for ten or 15 minutes, at that bus stop. You could actually set your clock by that Ulsterbus bus. It was very regular. Maybe there is something CIE can learn from Ulsterbus. It arrived on time, all the time. You could set your clock by it, and the bombers did too but there was an accident on the road to Castleblaney that day and the bus was delayed by five minutes. That bus was carrying up to 80 people. By not investigating the 1974 bombers and by not pursuing them, it is only by the grace of God that we are not dealing with hundreds of casualties as a result of neglect. You have an opportunity, ladies and gentlemen, to stop that awful litany of neglect.
Ms Margaret Urwin
I would just like to demonstrate to you the thinking of the Irish Government five years ago when it was attempting to bring pressure on the British Government to set up a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane. We are talking about April 1999. This is the test that the Irish Government was applying as to what was required in order to justify such a public inquiry.
In a letter to Dr. Mowlam, the Department of Foreign Affairs said:
The accumulated evidence is sufficient to give reasonable cause to the public to believe that collusion may have taken place. Moreover, the allegations serve to undermine confidence in the rule of law and the concept of equality before the law. In my view, they can only be answered with confidence, one way or the other, through the mechanism of a public inquiry.
These are the words of the junior Minister for Foreign Affairs, Liz O'Donnell. She further stated:
We very much approached the Pat Finucane case as a reckoning with the past so as to signal that the new dispensation of the Good Friday Agreement represents a new reality and the promise of a new future.
The Department of Foreign Affairs then refers, in the Finucane case, to "the compelling circumstantial evidence presented by the marked change in the pattern of loyalist killings between 1988 and 1994". This is what Judge Barron has done in the case of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. He has found compelling circumstantial evidence. When we talk about the marked change in the pattern of loyalist killings between 1988 and 1994, you certainly got yesterday from the Pat Finucane Centre, and again today from Mr. O'Neill, the pattern of loyalist killings in the murder triangle from the early to mid-1970s. There was a particular pattern of loyalist killings in the 1970s, as you had between 1988 and 1994.
The Department of Foreign Affairs' letter also refers to the belief that RUC officers failed to co-operate with, and possibly sought to frustrate, the Stevens investigation. In the case of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, Judge Barron states that he believes that the RUC did not fully co-operate with the Garda.
The letter further states "there was a widespread belief in the Nationalist community that members and units of the security forces were involved in systematic purposeful collusion". In the case of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, for many years and even more strongly since the publication of the Barron report, there is a widespread belief among the general public that members of the British security forces were involved. Certainly, Mr. Justice Barron believes the bombing was organised from the farm of the RUC reservist, James Mitchell, of Glenanne.
The Department of Foreign Affairs goes on to state:
It has been a poignant characteristic of relatives who have lost loved ones in such circumstances that the desire for truth and justice reaches a particularly acute point during sustained peace; that the lack of corrective action denied them the normal solace of the pursuit and prosecution of those who inflicted such pain and loss; and that those failures endorsed an existing sense among nationalists of being undervalued and unequal in the eyes of the law.
That resonates with us, having worked so long with the bereaved families and survivors of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. This is their experience. They have felt undervalued and unequal in the eyes of the law. The then Minister of State, Deputy Liz O'Donnell, went on to state that however desirable in terms of political reconciliation it may be to draw a line under the past, victims' relatives will inevitably carry their burdens into everyone's present, and will continue to do so unless they have answers that help reconcile them with their loss; and that the pursuit of certain cases can serve to be representative of that process of candour and truth. What more appropriate representative case could be taken, and public inquiry established, than into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the greatest single atrocity committed on this island since the Second World War?
Do we have a copy of the letter from the Department of Foreign Affairs?
We will get a copy of it.
Ms Bernie McNally
Serious questions have been raised by Mr. Justice Barron. The many people who, through their lives and their line of work, past and present, and who have appeared before the sub-committee and made oral and written submissions have only added to the questions he raised. The sub-committee's responsibility to find the truth is enormous, and it must be done through a full public tribunal of inquiry. It cannot be weighed and measured in silver or gold because truth is invaluable to every citizen of this country, and it must be achieved whatever the cost.
The passage of time cannot be allowed to discharge the Government of its duty to the citizens of this nation in finding that truth. It must be one of our fundamental values that we build our nation on peace and reconciliation. The Government continues to shrink from its duty to the 34 people who were murdered, to their families and to those of us who were maimed and had our lives totally disrupted. This neglect continues. It has gone on for far too long and the time for truth is now. Will our children be sitting here in 30 more years accusing this sub-committee and this Government of further neglect and abandonment?
After Dublin and Monaghan many more lives were lost through collusion as past Governments sat by as passive spectators. I ask the sub-committee to please be strong enough to fight for the truth.
Sitting suspended at 11.30 a.m. and resumed at 11.55 a.m.
I thank Mr. Ó Dúlacháin, Mr. O'Neill, Ms McNally and Ms Urwin for coming to assist us in our work. I found the presentations this morning extremely powerful and certainly thought-provoking, especially as Mr. O'Neill raised issues which had not been raised previously, which I found extremely interesting. I have very little in my own mind to clarify arising from what you have said but I have a few questions. I do not want the impression to be given that because of the fact that we ask questions we are predisposed towards a particular point of view. We are not. Certainly, I am not. It is important that you know that.
Mr. O'Neill, you spent a lot of time on the collusion issue which certainly is a major concern and made the point that as the State had failed its citizens, an investigation was, therefore, required. That point has been made on a number of occasions. If it was to you that the State through the Barron inquiry and its report says: "Yes, there has been collusion; we have made a finding that there has been collusion, that there were deficiencies in the Garda investigation, that major lessons have to be learned about this", what would your response be? A reading of the Barron report could be that the matter has been inquired into, an investigation has been conducted and Mr. Justice Barron has said there is certain evidence of collusion, in some cases an inference and almost a probability that there was. He states without doubt that the Garda investigation was flawed etc. That is in the public domain and people know that there was collusion and faults in the whole investigation. By holding a public inquiry, what extra benefit will be added to that?
Before these hearings started, and even since, people would say to me that they know the army was, at some level or another, involved in this, that there was collusion. The citizens of the State know that and they know that a proper investigation did not take place, and that we now have a report, compiled on behalf of the State, agreeing with this view. How would a public inquiry further matters?
Mr. O’Neill
The Deputy means the British Army. The Deputy is not casting any aspersions against our own Army.
No, certainly not.
Mr. O’Neill
First, Mr. Justice Barron's work did not amount to an inquiry. He was tasked to address these issues and to carry out an assessment. He was not tasked to conduct an inquiry.
His terms of reference were to carry out a thorough investigation. People may disagree whether he did so.
Mr. O’Neill
We are back to what Mr. Ó Dúlacháin was saying about semantics. Mr. Justice Barron looked at papers and occasionally interviewed people, including those who we introduced to, or located for, him. He did not put people under oath and he did not give them the opportunity of rebutting views that he was forming. Mr. Cooney has addressed some of the deficiencies in that process and in terms of what he was able to do. He also pointed to the drawbacks in that process and, indeed, in this process because. We are dealing with mass murder but we have to be careful with what we say as persons' reputations might be at stake.
There are great limitations to the processes that have been carried on to date. I might be a little happier - I would not be happy - if I knew that Mr. Justice Barron's findings about the Garda investigation were accepted by the Garda authorities, but they are not. Much of what is said by Mr. Justice Barron about the response of the Government of the day is not accepted by leading members of that Government. We are left in a situation whereby a retired Supreme Court judge, a man for whom I have a great deal of respect and whose integrity I would not question for one moment, has, with very limited resources and in a limited process, reached certain conclusions which have been challenged by pillars of the Establishment and agencies of the State.
In addressing or considering this report, the sub-committee has looked, almost in inquiry mode, into certain aspects of what Mr. Justice Barron touched upon. It has received submissions from experts in the Army, etc., who have advanced propositions which might be at odds with what Mr. Justice Barron concluded.
We have a situation where after four years of this process, the families and the people of Ireland are left with a number of different possibilities. Either the Government of the day, if one accepts the Barron report, did not show that much care and attention to the issue or, if one accepts what Mr. Cooney stated, they did. Either there was a flawed investigation, which is what the Barron report states, or there was not a flawed investigation because that is what Commissioner Conroy stated. That is simply not good enough for something of this seriousness. If one was investigating a matter which touched the financial affairs of a company, individual or citizen who was appearing before this committee and matters were left lie like that, the person would be in the High Court like a shot. We cannot refer to the record which shows what a particular member of the Northern Ireland Judiciary knew about a certain series of crimes involving the RUC of the day. The fact that I cannot say that means that this process is limited and it is limited in a similar way to the way Judge Barron's process was limited. That is my answer to that question.
You mentioned Mr. Weir's very serious allegations in relation to collusion. My interpretation of Judge Barron's report was that when he said that they had to be treated with the utmost seriousness, I think that comment was made in the section where he was just assessing Mr. Weir's credibility as a witness. I think your suggestion was that he had said in his report that they had to treated with the utmost seriousness and therefore we needed a further inquiry. My reading of it is that because of these allegations and the history of the individuals, he had to make an assessment of the credibility of the person. He said, "Having made that assessment, I am treating what he says with the utmost seriousness and I am making my findings on that basis." With other witnesses he could say, "I don't really take this person seriously." Would you agree with this?
Mr. O’Neill
I agree. He makes certain assessments with respect to Mr. Wallace and Mr. Holroyd but he makes very few other assessments. He makes an assessment about the Government of the day's response to the bombings. He makes a number of assessments but they are, if you like, spots on the page that he is looking at - just areas. There is not a sense of a coherent and overall assessment. That is not a criticism of Judge Barron. The issue is too important to have it assessed along the same model, in the way the Profumo incident was assessed by Lord Justice Denning in the 1960s. Judge Barron did what Lord Denning did. He called in Mr. Profumo, he called in Dr. Ward, he called in Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler and other people, interviewed them and came up with a report. The result was that Dr. Ward was prosecuted in very dubious circumstances and committed suicide. A process like that can often cause an injustice. Pat Cooney feels hard done by; he feels that his character has been impugned to some degree. He has had an opportunity to come here and rebut that but you are left with a situation where the record of history is still undetermined. That is not good enough for this case.
Many people have questioned the findings of many public tribunals also. I direct one question to Mr. Ó Dúlacháin. At the start of your presentation you were very emphatic that there were two essential factors which needed to be answered by a public inquiry, (a) the relatives were entitled to "a verdict", and (b), why were the perpetrators not brought to justice? You are asking the State for a public inquiry to provide a verdict and justice. You have used the words "truth" and "justice" throughout. What if it was said to you that there were some circumstances and some cases - history is littered with examples - where you could not get the ultimate truth in relation to any particular event? In relation to a verdict, this carries a strong suggestion that people will be found guilty, or not guilty, and serve sentences. Would you not accept that it is highly improbable that this could ever be ascertained?
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
Not at all. The words "ultimate truth" are a trap. This is not about ultimate truth; it is about a process to get at the truth. If you start talking about ultimate truth, you will never embark upon any judicial determination of any kind. Even in a criminal trial they do not talk about ultimate truth. What you have is a process in which an inquiry can proceed. Certain people are dead but many people are still alive. By way of example the C3 files, the Garda who had custody of the C3 files and was responsible for that division, Assistant Commissioner Larry Wren, is still alive. As far as we are aware, he has never been questioned as to what happened to the C3 files during the 1970s. In 1979, Assistant Commission Joe Ainsworth took custody of C3 and would have been a custodian of the files in C3 and he has never appeared anywhere to be queried on the status of the files when he took over. That is one of the minutiae that has not been inquired into.
Two aspect that are capable of being investigated are the "what and why" of what happened to the Garda investigation. All that the Barron report tells us is what happened, it is like Mr. Justice Barron confirming that a plane fell out of the sky and debris was found on the ground. That is as far as Mr. Justice Barron got. We say the information is available to effectively reconstruct the "black box" of that criminal investigation.
It must be asked why did such a criminal investigation collapse. When he appeared before the sub-committee, the Garda Commissioner referred to changes that have taken place and improvements in technology and resources. Ultimately, every failure that Mr. Justice Barron identifies, other than a forensic assessment, is a failure of intellect, a failure to make decisions. It is not a failure in terms of science or scientific equipment. In looking at the investigation into 1974, we have no sense of confidence that even at this stage the Garda has reflected on that investigation and identified what has gone wrong. We do not know if the Garda has audited the unsolved murders since then. We do not know if the Garda is aware of the location of the exhibits regarding murders in 1975, in the early 1980s to the 1990s. We do not know if there is a central register of unsolved murders. We do not know in any sense whether the serious issues that arise from that investigation have been addressed in a substantive way.
I welcome back our guests. The fact that we have been sharing the same room and the same air for the past month means that we are almost family at this stage. I will start by questioning Ms Margaret Urwin, who quoted extensively from a letter from the Department of Foreign Affairs in April 1999. She referred to the Government's position on the Pat Finnucane murder, that the accumulated evidence, including the circumstantial evidence, was compelling and warranted a public inquiry and that nationalists were undervalued and unequal before the law. A a few months later, Justice for the Forgotten called for a public inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, but instead got the Barron inquiry. Did you have a view on that?
Ms Urwin
We met the Taoiseach in April 1999, which was the first occasion a serving Taoiseach met the families and survivors of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. It was 25 years after the atrocity and from then we lobbied all the political parties in an attempt to get a public inquiry established. We had a report from Mr. John Wilson of the Victims' Commission in August 1999, which recommended a private inquiry. That was rejected out of hand by all of the members of Justice for the Forgotten on the day following publication of the report. We subsequently went into negotiation with the Department of the Taoiseach, which came up with the Barron Inquiry. While it effectively was a private inquiry, it was unique in that it was to be an assessment of the available material. It was not to be seen as an end in itself and it was accepted as such by all of the members at a meeting in the Regency Hotel near Dublin Airport in December 1999 on the basis that this was a first step, an assessment of all the available material.
The second difference to an ordinary private inquiry, or the usual type of private inquiry, was that the lawyers for Justice for the Forgotten could have an input, a liaison with the judge, who at the time was to be the late Mr. Justice Hamilton. This meant that the lawyers could put forward suggestions to the judge as to who he might interview and as to documents or files he might seek. It also entailed conducting our own investigation as the resources of both Mr. Justice Hamilton and subsequently Mr. Justice Barron were quite limited. It was accepted on that basis.
We were also guaranteed public hearings before this sub-committee. That was to be the second strand. Therefore, we knew that we were getting the first two strands while a decision on the third strand, a recommendation for the holding of a public inquiry, was to be for the sub-committee. That was the difference from the standard private inquiry.
We were all disappointed that we could not get the public inquiry for which we had campaigned from as far back as 1993 if not before. Some of the relatives had campaigned for it before then. However what transpired was seen as a first step.
It was not within the remit of the late Mr. Justice Hamilton, and subsequently Mr. Justice Barron, to recommend a public inquiry. Deputy Power earlier mentioned that Mr. Justice Barron did not say if there should be a public inquiry, but he could not do so as it was outside his remit. That decision is with the sub-committee.
Is it not true that in the establishment of the then Hamilton inquiry, which subsequently became the Barron inquiry, Justice for the Forgotten was in negotiation with the Taoiseach's office and that they came to agreement on various items? Did Justice for the Forgotten come to agreement on the terms of reference as well?
Ms Urwin
On the terms of reference of the Barron inquiry?
Yes.
Ms Urwin
Yes, we did.
Did Ms Urwin also say that there was agreement with the Taoiseach's office that there would be a further inquiry?
Ms Urwin
No. I said there was an agreement that we would be guaranteed public hearings, that first the judge would assess the material, then we would have the public hearings which we are now having, following which it would be for the sub-committee to make a decision. At that stage there were to be three options. One of those options - the third option - is now gone because of the Abbeylara judgment. It would have allowed the sub-committee to recommend that it should inquire into the matter.
On that final point, Ms Urwin quoted from the letter by the then Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell. Does she find it a little hypocritical that on the one hand, there was a call for a full public inquiry into the Pat Finucane murder while on the other hand, Justice for the Forgotten got what has been conceded to have been a reduced, private inquiry which the group was not happy with?
Ms Urwin
I do not see that I have conceded that we got this. It was always our understanding——
Did she say she was not happy with it?
Ms Urwin
We would have been a lot happier if we had got a public inquiry, but because we live in the real world we took the option open to us because it was the best one available at the time.
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin, in your opening remarks you posed the question: does the Barron report bring about finality? What would you consider to be finality? You further asked the question: who killed those people and why they were not brought to justice? Are you implying that finality can only be achieved if both questions are answered?
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
Finality is when you know that the State has done everything within its power to investigate the matter. That is finality. What we do know is that the State has not done everything within its power. It has not used the powers of public inquiry.
You were involved in the establishment of the Hamilton or Barron inquiry, whichever one wants to call it, and its terms of reference, yet you said, "The report is one person's journey through a mass of material, with little help and no method or structure for weighing up evidence or material." That is a fairly damning indictment of something you were instrumental in establishing. Is it with hindsight that you are now saying that they did not have the powers to do what they wanted? What puts you in such a strong position to be able to make such a strong statement when it was, if one likes, something of your own creation?
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
First, it is not an indictment. It is a review and a critique. Second, I think your approach is somewhat disingenuous. If we were happy to accept process A, we would never have asked for process B, which is this committee hearing, and we would never have negotiated a position to come to this committee to discuss a third stage. If we were going to be happy with whatever Barron or Hamilton did, we would never have asked for any more. The fact that we have this stage and the prospect of a further stage is evidence of our inherent reluctance to believe that stage A would meet the relatives' needs.
I think you were right when you asked the question in relation to the position of the Government in late 1999. We did find it inconsistent. We did find what was being said about the deaths of important people such as lawyers to be inconsistent with what was being said about the deaths of ordinary people. We made that point and we negotiated with the Taoiseach and the leader of the Labour Party and had discussions with the leader of the Fine Gael Party. The best we could arrive at, acting for ordinary people, was to negotiate a start to a process in 1999 which prospectively had three stages. We are here today simply saying that it has not achieved finality and that the State has not exhausted its own resources in terms of doing what it is capable of doing. We are now asking it to do no more or no less than what it is capable of doing and what it has done in other circumstances, in atrocities, in scandals, in cases involving people infected with hepatitis C and in other circumstances, to simply use what is available.
Before I put my final question, I find it upsetting that Mr. Ó Dúlacháin would consider that I am disingenuous in any of my dealings at this sub-committee. I do not know why he would take it upon himself to put such a label on me——
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
I was referring to the argument, not to you as a person.
You said, "you are."
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
In the argument.
That is for another day. My final point is addressed to both Mr. O'Neill and Mr. Ó Dúlacháin. I think both were extremely critical of Garda investigations and, in particular, the RUC investigation, which is outside our jurisdiction. In relation to the Garda investigation and a possible further inquiry, who would you see carrying out the kind of minute investigations that might be needed? If you have virtually no confidence in what the Garda might be able to do, who do you see taking their place in conducting those investigations?
Mr. O’Neill
Our comments were referable to the findings made by Mr. Justice Barron in terms of his criticism of the Garda inquiry. In so far as I mentioned the Garda inquiry, I did so in the context that the Garda appeared to be quite happy with the nature of the Garda inquiries conducted in 1974 and subsequently, but Mr. Justice Barron was not. That was an issue which remained to be resolved because if the Garda is challenging what Mr. Justice Barron has found, then that is something which has to be resolved or else the Garda has not confronted and addressed the issues he isolated. This could happen again. There are issues here.
As to who we would get to carry out the investigative role in terms of collusion, there are people who have some experience. We mentioned in our written submission, which members already have, that there were options available. We gave as an example the team retained by the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Ms O'Loan, which includes a number of policemen from other jurisdictions and people who have experience and skills in investigating collusion and corruption in police dealings in other countries and which would provide a pool of expertise. We would feel happy, if a process of inquiry was to be embarked upon, that that pool of expertise could be accessed.
Apart from the fact my colleague is not disingenuous——
I want to clear that up. It was an argument and if anything was taken personally, I am sure it is withdrawn.
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
Completely.
Was Mr. Ó Dúlacháin's attitude to the Barron examination rather than inquiry similar to Michael Collins's attitude to the treaty - it was a step towards the ultimate goal? Would that sum it up?
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
Maybe Mr. O'Neill was alive at the time.
The ultimate objective was an inquiry.
Mr. O’Neill
Let us not hope of sitting around a boundary commission on this, because we know what happened to that.
The delegation is welcome. The fact it has been here for the whole duration of these hearings indicates how seriously it takes the matter and how much store it places on the work we are doing. We appreciate that very much. I found its submission extraordinarily valuable. There are new elements to it that we have not heard to date. The Finucane Centre presentation yesterday showed how a small group with little resources was able, within four years since it was set up, to present a strong case for a ballistics link in the murder triangle in the area plus trial documents so on.
I do not want to look at the ballistics side, but in his statement, Mr. O'Neill said the fingerprints for collusion were to be found in police files which are on public record, of which I took a note.
Mr. O’Neill
They are not public record but they are publicly accessible through the process - in other words, they are not top secret.
That is what I want to explore. The Finucane people were able to say that they had worked with the PSNI and that they had also got some trial documents. Mr. O'Neill referred to a number of cases, including the case of the young man in Sallins who was knifed to death, the Mohan case in Castleblaney and the Rock Bar case. If the information is accessible in those cases and he thinks that the fingerprints of collusion can be got, what is to stop him pursuing discovery of documents in those matters in Northern Ireland to get that information? That would not require a public inquiry and probably could be done at far less expense.
Mr. O’Neill
Is it our job or is it the State's job to vindicate its citizens' rights? How far does the Deputy wish to quote a former Minister for Justice? How far does that go when she said to the relatives, in the 1990s, that there is no information and no evidence on the Garda files about this issue but they could go and find out themselves and come back and tell her. Is that what we are being told after the Barron process?
With the greatest respect, it is not the function or responsibility of the families to investigate crime. Collusion is a crime. It is the function of the State authorities. If it cannot be done through a police investigation, it should be done by a public inquiry.
May I rephrase the question? Of course it is not some expectation that should be put on the families, but can the process of inquiring into those matters which are accessible be done by a better mechanism than a public inquiry? Mr. O'Neill can imagine the amount of time it would take to look at all of these cases, both in the North and in the Republic, where one would be seeking disclosure of information in criminal cases. One would be entitled to such information if one was arguing that agents of the state were responsible for collusion and participation in some of these offences. Obviously one does not expect Mr. O'Neill and the relatives to do it, but is a public inquiry the way to go about it?
Mr. O’Neill
It would appear to us that it is probably the only mechanism because there does not appear to be any other legal structure available. We are not in love with public inquires per se. They have flaws and we have seen how they can be abused. One is confined in that, through procedures of lack of monitoring and so forth, they can go down culs-de-sac. The way public inquiries have been elongated in this State has given them a bad name but it is an entirely distorted view of the efficacy of a public inquiry process, if it is probably managed.
In 1996 we started a process of doing what the Deputy suggested when the late Paddy Doyle, who lost his daughter and his two grandchildren in Parnell Street, brought an action in the High Court to get access to those files which would indicate the degree to which the RUC and the Northern Ireland authorities failed to co-operate with the Garda inquiries. He was denied access to the files. It was contested and issues of privilege were invoked. The High Court held against him and we appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court held that a case to the European Commission on Human Rights, as it then was, was not a justiciable action as it was understood under the discovery rules of the superior courts and, therefore, Mr. Doyle did not have a right per se to look for discovery to pursue his complaint to Europe.
The State has a far greater locus standi. If a state establishes a public inquiry, it mandates and equips its team with the necessary powers to go to the High Court in Northern Ireland and request access, not only in respect of the file relating to the case of Paddy Doyle but also to the files relating to all of the victims. Otherwise there will be a need, not for one request in the High Court from a public inquiry established here but for about 26 requests because there will have to be 26 individual applications to the High Court. I do not know how that will minimise costs.
It is difficult to see how the State can initiate such an action and what co-operation there would be by the authorities in Northern Ireland. That is part of the problem we are facing. How can the State do it?
On the other side of the coin, could Mr. O'Neill or somebody else initiate the action in Northern Ireland, given that the people who committed the offences were from Northern Ireland - or at least there is a strong case for so thinking - so that, therefore, one would not have to go extra-jurisdiction to discover the documents and would be seeking discovery within the jurisdiction?
Mr. O’Neill
In regard to what cause of action?
In regard to an offence——
Mr. O’Neill
Citizens cannot investigate offences. That is for the police to do.
Let us take the Castleblayney bombing that Mr. O'Neill talked about earlier.
Mr. O’Neill
That is cross-jurisdiction because Castleblayney is in the Republic.
What about a wrongful killing or death action?
Mr. O’Neill
A wrongful death action may or may not be statute barred.
It is an option——
Mr. O’Neill
Does the Deputy have a defendant in mind? If the defendant is the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom has a sovereign immunity defence.
That happened in the Paddy Doyle case, Mr. O'Neill said.
Mr. O’Neill
No, that happened in another case involving an individual who had an altercation with a British soldier on the Border. The Supreme Court held that the sovereign immunity defence was recognised by Irish law, and the European Court of Human Rights subsequently held that it did not infringe Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
If the case was pursued in Northern Ireland it would not have sovereign immunity to——
Mr. O’Neill
Cormac can deal with Northern Ireland.
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
The point is relevant to pursue. The Deputy is asking whether we can progress the matter further by other actions. Invariably the answer is "yes, we can" through legal creativity, but it is in a hugely fragmented manner. It is riddled with uncertainty and involves legal skirmishes in many courts in many jurisdictions. By way of a very short example, the Omagh relatives, who have decided to embark on civil litigation, had first to face the prospect of raising £1 million.
The reality is that our experience of attempting to progress the matter by litigation has given rise to difficulties in the High Court and Supreme Court. We got thrown out of the European Court of Human Rights on the basis that there was a six-month procedural rule within which an application or complaint had to be made. The court could not tell us when the six months ran from although it said it ran from some time in the past. This would entail asking the families to encounter huge difficulties.
The issue is different. Is it so grave that it moves from personal to public responsibility to pursue it? We are simply saying that the matter is so grave that it is now a public responsibility to pursue this matter for the reasons given by Mr. Donlon. It was a bombing of these individuals but it was also a bombing of the State. It was the bombing if unspecified citizens who either walked past a few minutes before or missed it a few minutes later. If it is a public matter then it should be inquired into by the public.
What I found so interesting was that at this stage, 30 years down the road, the witnesses did some modules for Mr. Justice Barron and were able to delve into some new material, including trial and police files. The Finucane Centre was able to get those as well. They are original documents relating to the time, and that was done in the space of the last three or four years. Is that not correct? That was the submission of the witnesses and of the Finucane Centre. They have only been in existence for three or four years. Arising out of that, do the witnesses believe that there is a large scope for discovery of such original documents? They may not be security documents - MI5 and so on - but they may be police and trial documents for which, in the right circumstances, you may be able to issue a writ for discovery.
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
An inquiry into collusion is a difficult investigation. Once you set up a team to investigate it, they have to figure out how they are going to tackle it. You will not get all the answers as to how it is done at this stage. Broad parameters cannot work. It can work if you understand that an investigation of collusion is not brought to an end by "wow" discovery. It is not about one document; it is not about one knockout point. It is about layers and layers of separate items of information being gathered. A lot of those are already there. It is not a question of investigating the background to every single incident. It is about identifying what is relevant out of an incident and getting that particular information verified or not.
The way we see it progressing is that Barron has engaged in general correspondence. It is capable with the information available of directing hundreds of specific questions which, if they are not replied to, bear on a finding on that specific issue. Individuals can bring evidence to a tribunal from their own actions. I do not think a tribunal is guaranteed that, as a tribunal, it will succeed in getting orders for discovery. You might find a huge legal battle on that one.
That is the problem we are facing. You have shown how it can be done on an individual basis. We want to see how it can be done on a collective basis - in other words, if we were to propose a tribunal of inquiry, what powers would it have to access a document? How would it get to discover those files? You can discover those files if you have a direct action in relation to a specific person who has been killed or whatever. Where an action is being taken by the agents of the State, you can seek discovery. How would a tribunal of inquiry have the collective power to get those files or are we talking about all sorts of mini-investigations in relation to all the individual cases that would have to precede a further decision on a tribunal of inquiry which could then act on the matters?
Mr. O’Neill
It is important you do not get the wrong end of the stick on this. The modalities of getting information from RUC-PSNI files, as demonstrated by the Pat Finucane Centre, have been through a direct engagement with individual RUC CID officers who go to meetings at the Pat Finucane Centre and who meet the relatives. Since this process started, we have had one meeting with the Commissioner of the Garda Síochána and his assistant. Up to then, the only interest the Garda had in the families was in monitoring the general meetings of Justice for the Forgotten in Parnell Square, as if we were some form of subversive organisation, adding huge insult to the families, but that is just by way of an aside.
And turning up once a year at the Pro-Cathedral.
Mr. O’Neill
The RUC-PSNI have taken their human rights obligations more seriously than the Garda Síochána but that is possibly a matter of education - political or cultural education, or whatever. They have met the Pat Finucane families, for want of a better term, and the families have engaged with senior RUC officers and information has been imparted. We cannot point to any court case we have taken on behalf of the Dublin-Monaghan families in Northern Ireland for access to records and we do not know what the result of that application would be. I know from my own experience in seeking access to police files in miscarriage of justice cases I have taken that it is possible, through a long process whereby the judge gets the file, reads it and decides what is relevant for me, my colleagues or my client to see, to get some, all or none of it. In the North of Ireland the process of discovery of sensitive information through the courts is even further complicated by public interest immunity certificates and by certificates served by the Ministry of Defence. This has bedevilled the Saville inquiry. Many of these arguments are culs-de-sac because it goes back to the original argument that one cannot have an effective inquiry without access to, and co-operation from, all of the files available to the British.
Our argument is more subtle. It says that if a public inquiry is established here, even without necessarily getting all the court orders one needs in the North, in our view, co-operation will be forthcoming from CID officers, both retired and serving. The RUC is not a monolith, nor is the British state in Northern Ireland. A great number, if not the vast majority, of people in the RUC absolutely despise the activities of some of their colleagues in colluding with murderers and are prepared to shop them. All one has to do is set up a mechanism whereby they can do that, whether in a public setting, in a private setting or through an investigative process. This information is easily obtainable. All one has to do is set up the mechanism.
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
I want to make one observation on that which is critical in understanding. When one sets up an investigation into collusion, the ground rules are very different to any other investigation one has established. One does not have to get the primary documents. If the Pat Finucane Centre walks in with a photocopy of a transcript of a judgment delivered, that is evidence on which the tribunal can work. It does not have to go back and get the original file. In a similar way, if they have facts and material on ballistics, they can bring it to the investigation. The investigation can request the originals but if it does not get them, that does not stop it dealing with the matter. It is very important that one does not effectively concede power of frustration to the party one is investigating. It is critical. If one does not grasp that point, then no state or international body can investigate collusion.
Returning to this module, I welcome the members of the Justice for the Forgotten group. Like other members of the sub-committee, I compliment them on this morning's interesting submission which merits careful consideration on our part.
There was much talk yesterday about controlling and monitoring inquiries. In that regard, there were submissions, on the one hand that the terms should be very broad while, on the other, there was a contrary statement that they should be focused and clear. Am I correct in stating that what Justice for the Forgotten is submitting to us is that there are two main issues still to be inquired into, that is, the cause of the collapse of the Garda investigation and collusion in the bombing by the UK security forces that these would be specifically termed within any scope that we would give to anybody?
Mr. O’Neill
That is correct.
This was discussed yesterday. What kind of time limit would be fair to put on that? We all know that, due probably to poor chairmanship or whatever else, the matters have gone all over the place in a number of the public tribunals to date?
The Senator should not say "poor chairmanship".
Sorry, I was only expressing an opinion.
Do not use that expression. Can you withdraw that, please? There are only a number of specific chairmen of the tribunals. You will have to withdraw that.
Okay, I will withdraw that.
Thank you.
They have gone on, which, perhaps as a consequence, has made the task we have much more difficult. How can one control them and what time limit would they see put on it?
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
The time scale has to be realistic to the task at hand, but with a matter such as collusion one has to ask an inquiry to report back within a period of time, whether 18 months or two years, and to establish how far or to what extent it has been able to uncover or establish. If you leave it indefinite, the potential for it to grow arms like an octopus and keep on growing is indefinite. In essence, you get to a stage where you do have to take a photograph of what you have got and make a judgment on it. All we are asking is that a reasonable endeavour, in terms of the public process and in terms of the enthusiasm, energy and funding devoted to it, be made for a reasonable period of time. The difficulty with some of the tribunals has been that the terms of reference are akin to inviting an inquiry into sin.
What you are saying is that the terms would be very narrow and that those are the two issues you would identify.
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
Yes.
What about the point made yesterday, I think by Mr. McGonigal, that of the current tribunals, those which focused on the investigative mode in a very thorough way seemed to have progressed much more satisfactorily than those which had not? How do you see that happening in this instance given that a lot of the investigation is taking place outside this jurisdiction?
Mr. O’Neill
We believe that is a very, very important point. We do not see a public inquiry into this atrocity as in any way mirroring what has happened in Derry where there have been 450 odd days of hearings. We believe the actual days of public hearings which people despair at in public inquiries would be quite limited, provided that the first, investigative, module is carried out in a thorough way. We have suggested that there is a pool of expertise on this island. We have suggested that obviously there are people in the Police Service of Northern Ireland who are willing to give information.
We are looking at the political developments at the moment and the historical rapprochement between the two traditions on this island which is taking place. We are looking at the peace process and we are looking at addressing and finally dealing with a matter which it is in the interests of the Police Service of Northern Ireland as much as in the interests of the Garda and the people of Ireland to address. With a well equipped investigative team, with the backing of the warrants and authorities of a public inquiry and with the endorsement of the Government, a great deal of investigative work could be done before you get near public hearings.
On the case taken by Mr. Paddy Doyle, referred to in paragraph J on page 10 of your submission, what files were actually specified in the requests for discovery of documents? What was in the Department's affidavit? Was there anything in it? On what date did that take place? Were any of the files sought part of the files now stated to be missing? Was there any mention at the time by the Department in its affidavit of the fact that files may have been missing? Would that have been pertinent to the affidavit?
Mr. O’Neill
I will explain the process we asked to take place. I was the solicitor involved in that action, and I gave evidence for some time before Ms Justice Laffoy, the judge hearing that issue in the High Court. We asked generically for the Garda investigation files. In evidence, I pinpointed for the court those files which were relevant to the issue of co-operation from the RUC because we were making the case that the RUC had failed to launch a murder inquiry into the bombings and had failed to pursue those we believed had cases to meet in terms of being suspects with the diligence that the atrocity merited. There was an issue in terms of the United Kingdom's response to the atrocity, the gravamen of Mr. Doyle’s action to the European Court. At no stage, either by way of affidavit, submission or cross-examination was it put to me or to my colleagues, or counsel for Mr. Doyle, that the files, the subject matter of our application, were in any sense attenuated, missing, mislaid, misplaced or diminished by any administrative action or failing.
You gave us a lot of information on the Rock Bar trial. Was there an intervention, a nolle prosequi, in that case? For those of us who studied Latin a long time ago, could you elaborate on the precise effect of this?
Mr. O’Neill
Cormac and I might both respond to that briefly. It was in connection with the attack on Donnelly's Bar, Silver Bridge, which involved the murder of a number of people, including Mr. Blacknell's father. It is a matter that is still being investigated by the Pat Finucane Centre but there appears to have been a decision taken to enter a nolle prosequi and a question which has to be resolved is to what degree the then Attorney General may have had some role in that, or what was the basis of his assessment in directing a nolle prosequi?
The role the Attorney General might have played in Prime Minister Thatcher's Government is being investigated.
Mr. O’Neill
I understand the Pat Finucane Centre is still pursuing inquiries into that.
There is no information available on that. I will put the Chairman on notice that he may or may not want you to answer this question but I am asking it for a reason. I am not asking you to name names. When the investigation wound down in August 1974, it was then pursued, I think, under Chief Superintendent Tony McMahon. Do you have any information on any associations Chief Superintendent McMahon would have had with senior politicians at that time?
Mr. O’Neill
No.
I too welcome the families, the members of Justice for the Forgotten and the legal team.
Though time has not been on our side, I think there could have been much more we could have discussed today. I am interested in the international law aspect. I refer, in particular, to page 14 of your submission where you mention the definition of collusion and the fact that the United Nations appointed a special rapporteur in 1982 to investigate responsibility in relation to states. You state about ten lines from the end that a state can also be answerable for deaths by persons acting in direct or indirect compliance with the state. Will you talk us through this and explain it a little more, including the status of the rapporteur? It is a very useful reference which perhaps you will point out to us is very valuable.
Mr. O’Neill
There are a number of issues arising from this. In particular, there are issues arising from what happended in Latin America in the 1970s where you had death squads and the official police forces in many states, including Chile, Argentina and Brazil, in particular, and one or two other states such as Colombia, involved in death squad activities in the elimination of members of trade unions and opposition groups and democratically elected politicians. The issue was how this was going to be investigated. The United Nations felt it was necessary to set up an independent international process of arbitration and investigation to assess where a state could be held responsible.
The issue is important but, in a sense, it is almost beside the point in terms of collusion because collusion is a broader concept. The issues involved were state killings or state involvement with killings or what was happening in South America and what we believe was happening in Northern Ireland where you had a military reconnaissance force and other groups that had been set up under the advice of Mr. Kitson. They degenerated into situations where members of the undercover British Army recruited disaffected loyalists and republicans, or bribed, cajoled or blackmailed them into becoming agents, travelling with unbadged and un-uniformed members of the British forces in unmarked cars throughout Belfast in the early 1970s, and being used as point men, both loyalists and republicans, to point out people for assassination. That is documented. Whether that process of counter-insurgency operated in Dublin and Monaghan has yet to be established, but we know that six members of the gang from Glenanne who are deeply suspected of involvement in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings were at the time serving members of the RUC and the UDR.
It is relevant to look at that but it goes to the issue, as Mr. Mansfield pointed out, of involvement. That is a higher level of culpability on the state. In a sense, it is a different level of culpability. We are talking about collusion, but the definition of collusion is sourced ultimately in the attempts made by the international community to apply international law standards and basic human rights standards to the unlawful activities of states, their armies and those hired by them.
With regard to page 15 of the submission, does Mr. Ó Dúlacháin fully accept the definition of collusion as prescribed by the UN interpretation?
Mr. Ó Dúlacháin
That is our interpretation of the mandate of the special rapporteur and the documents surrounding that post. It is an attempt to reach a definition. Special rapporteurs are appointed at various stages by the United Nations for various purposes. They are not particularly well resourced. The mandate of the special rapporteur is limited in time and cannot historically go back beyond a certain period of time. What has arisen out of this process has been the establishment of the International Criminal Court and, similarly, the International Criminal Court is limited and cannot go back beyond 2000.
Thank you very much. I thank all of the legal representatives of Justice for the Forgotten, and Bernie McNally, the chairperson, and Margaret Urwin, the secretary, and the other members of Justice for the Forgotten representing the families of the victims and the survivors.
Sitting suspended at 1.05 p.m. and resumed at 2.05 p.m.
I welcome representatives of the Irish National Congress, Mr. Tom Cooper and Mr. Paul McGuill. First, I apologise to you. We are under a lot of pressure and I thank you for facilitating us in the change of time and date. We are very grateful to you for doing so. Before you begin, I have to tell you that while the members of the committee - Oireachtas Members - enjoy parliamentary privilege, invitees do not enjoy that same privilege. You have about ten minutes in total to make statements.
Mr. Tom Cooper
Thank you very much for the opportunity and for inviting the Irish National Congress to make our submission. I am quite conscious of the fact that we have a short time, so I have shortened what I was about to say but kept the main points I want to make.
For what reason did the Garda Special Branch maintain surveillance at memorials, vigils and masses commemorating those who died in Dublin and Monaghan when, two years later, the Garda investigation had effectively closed down? For years after that there was still a huge amount of Garda surveillance at memorials. It seemed that they, and the State, would have been better employed pursuing those who were responsible than monitoring people who went along to honour those who had been murdered in Dublin and Monaghan. The British Government approached the inquiry into the downing of flight 103 in the Lockerbie disaster in a painstaking, structured and systematic manner. International borders were crossed and a successful trial and convictions secured in Holland. Is it unreasonable, therefore, for the victims of Dublin and Monaghan to expect the same determined approach by the Garda and Government to bring those responsible for the biggest mass murder in Irish history to justice?
During the 1973-77 Coalition Government, the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act 1976 was enacted and I would like to know why nobody suspected of having committed an offence in the Republic was sought and tried either in Northern Ireland or Britain as the Act allowed? About two weeks ago the Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, made a statement that it was his belief that nothing more would be forthcoming from the British Government in the form of documentation which could be relevant to any further inquiry. We believe that that is most inappropriate, specifically when the sub-committee was sitting at the time. It could be seen as an attempt to influence the sub-committees' s decision——
Will you stick to the terms of reference of this committee? It is inappropriate to be making political statements here at this time. Please, stick to the actual terms of reference that we have. At this point in time we are on module 5 - the reasons there should be a public inquiry.
Mr. Cooper
The reason we feel there should be a public inquiry carried out by the State or a cross-jurisdictional inquiry is that we believe the victims and their families of the Dublin and Monaghan bombing were let down by the Government of the day. They were let down by the Garda Síochána as the investigation was wound down within two years. I believe they were let down by the British Government in its refusal to supply Mr. Justice Barron with the necessary documentation to identify those responsible for the murders and, possibly, bring them to justice. I believe they were let down by the people of Ireland at the time because the people of Ireland did not demand, as they should have done, for the truth to be uncovered.
There was a dreadful atrocity in Warrington in which two young boys were murdered. In Ireland, particularly here in Dublin, a peace movement was formed; people were sent on a peace train to Belfast; books of condolences were opened and in the place where I work, trade union officials were brought in to ask union members to sign a book of condolence. I find nothing wrong with that. What I do find wrong is that when the Dublin and Monaghan bombings happened, there was nothing of that nature. A few organisations of the nature of the Irish National Congress, although we were not in existence at that time, were trying to get the Government to do something for these people. What happened was totally wrong.
In the light of that, we, in the Irish National Congress, believe that this sub-committee has a duty to reflect civilised society's abhorrence at the events of May 1974 and we subsequently call on the sub-committee to recommend to the Dáil to establish an Anglo-Irish inter-jurisdictional inquiry or a full public inquiry by the State, or whichever inquiry it feels is required to extract the truth of what happened with power to compel the attendance of witnesses and access to all official documentation deemed necessary to fulfil these terms of reference.
Mr. Paul McGuill
I will briefly outline our written submission which may help members in any questions they want to ask.
Will you tell us what the Irish National Congress is and what your role is in the organisation?
Mr. McGuill
I am secretary of the Irish National Congress, a lobby group which was established over than ten years ago to campaign on behalf of the rights of northern Nationalists and also Irish national rights.
My interest in the Dublin-Monaghan bombings stems from my research for my MA thesis on political violence in the Republic from 1969 to 1998, a large part of which dealt with loyalist violence, a large part of which dealt particularly with the Dublin-Monaghan bombings in 1974.
The questions I pose in our submission are not rhetorical. I do not know what the answers are. I do not know the mass and size of 150 lbs of ANFOor whether it will fit into the boot of a Hillman Minx. I hope these questions can be addressed by a further inquiry and we can find out whether it would have been possible.
We believe that the bombings were part of a policy of official or institutional collusion. Part of the reason we believe this is that we do not believe that bombing of this sophistication could have been carried out by loyalists unassisted. That is why the major part of our submission deals with this issue. We believe that these bombings fit into a historical and international pattern of such collusion. We do not believe the question is whether there was collusion, given the fact that over 320 UDR soldiers were convicted of crimes between 1970 and 1990. We believe in the existence of collusion is an incontrovertible established historic fact. What we believe is at question, however, is whether this collusion was institutional or official policy.
Perhaps it might be useful at this point to define different types of collusion. In essence there are three different types of collusion: the first is organic where individual low level bad apple members of the security forces, motivated by frustration, bigotry or revenge facilitate or participate in acts of terrorism. The activities of John Ware and other RUC members is claimed to be of this type. The second is instrumental collusion where in order to penetrate clandestine organisations, members of the security forces or their informers participate in illegal acts to gain credibility and cover within such organisations while gathering evidence to destroy them. Britain claims that the activities of some of their intelligence agents were of this kind. The third is institutional or official collusion, where indigenous friendly paramilitary forces are used as deniable and dispensable cannon fodder to achieve the long-term policy objectives of an intelligence organisation. Authorisation for such activities may have come from an intentionally vague and ambiguous policy directive of a previous administration which permitted the downward delegation of decision making to a committee of civil servants who in turn delegate the day-to-day operational decisions to intelligence or military officers, who then delegate the nitty gritty details to junior officers on the ground, thereby ensuring plausible deniability on the grounds that they overstepped their remit. The policy can also disguise itself as the previous two types of collusion where paramilitary and junior security force officers who maybe motivated by organic or instrumental collusion are in fact being manipulated to achieve the objectives of official collusion.
The question of official state sponsored collusion in acts of political violence is complex and vexing. By their very nature, covert actions and conspiracies such as these are very difficult to prove or even to find evidence for it. Very little, if any evidence is committed to paper, those who know very often do not talk and equally those who talk very often do not know. As the political stakes are so high, those who know and talk very often are not heard or are very quickly silenced. Serious investigation can be side-tracked by wild conspiracy theories or stonewalled by obstructionism.
However, just because the task is very difficult, does not mean that it should not be undertaken or cannot be successful. In the historic and international experience of investigating such matters one usually encounters five layers of denial; it is like peeling the layers off an onion. First, any suggestion of collusion in action is emphatically denied, second, as evidence emerges of such activities the involvement of intelligence services will be denied; third, if their involvement can be demonstrated, the illegality or illegitimacy of their actions will be denied; fourth, if the illegality can be shown, the knowledge or approval of their superiors will be denied; fifth, if such knowledge and approval can be proven, then the actions will be justified on the grounds of national security or of the greater good. The experience of the various Stevens' inquiries over the past 14 years reinforces this model. I hope that will be of assistance to members.
Thank you. The sub-committee has agreed that questions in relation to the Irish National Congress will be addressed to you by Deputy Finian McGrath and Deputy Márie Hoctor.
I welcome Mr. Tom Cooper and Mr. Paul McGuill from the Irish National Congress and thank them both for the written and oral submissions. It is important that this sub-committee should record the role of the Irish National Congress and the very positive and major contribution it has made in recent years to Irish nationalism, working against sectarianism and the development of the peace process. Therefore, I want to commend and thank you for your work over the years, as well as for your dedication and loyalty to the issues in which you are involved.
As regards your submission, from your work over the years and having been in regular contact with people north and south of the Border, am I correct in saying you have met many people from the North, particularly from the Northern minority, who have expressed concerns about collusion, particularly about the Dublin bombings? Have you come across many citizens who have asked you to raise and campaign on these issues?
Mr. McGuill
Yes, that would be the case.
My second question relates to section 4 of your supplementary submission, which states in paragraph 4:
Irish military intelligence were informed by British military intelligence as early as 26 March 1974 that the RUC had been penetrated by the UDA, and the British Army chief of staff, General Michael Carver, in 1972, had suspicions, more than once proved, that some of its RUC special branch members had close links with Protestant extremists.
Is it your position that outside forces have, both in the past and even today, penetrated the security forces north of the Border?
Mr. McGuill
I think that would be the case. If you look at the statistics, in terms of 320 members of the UDR in a 20 year——
You mention that figure - 320 members of the UDR convicted of——
Mr. McGuill
They were convicted of various crimes from murder down to the possession of arms, or passing on information over the years, from 1970 to 1990. Obviously, since then, members of the Royal Irish Regiment have been convicted, although I do not have the exact figure. In addition, members of the RUC and British Army have also faced charges relating to collusion.
It is not just a case of the "few rotten apples in the barrel" syndrome.
Mr. McGuill
No. One issue that this would raise is: is it a policy, or have the British Government and British authorities been so negligent in keeping order over their own security forces that they have culpable responsibility for it, as it is allowed to recur again and again in various locations and various times in various regiments and security organisations?
Section 6 of your supplementary submission refers to 30 photographs of IRSP activists given by gardaí to Fred Holroyd in Garda HQ in 1975. You ask if they were assassinated by loyalists. Could you expand a little on this? What are your concerns?
Mr. McGuill
My concerns are that information supplied in good faith by our security forces may - wittingly or unwittingly, by being handed over to the RUC special branch and UDR - in turn have filtered its way down into the hands of loyalist paramilitaries. By providing this information, and maybe by not making the requisite checks and taking counter measures to ensure that such information would be safeguarded, it may have actually led to the assassination of Irish citizens.
Would it be your belief that some of these 30 people actually were assassinated?
Mr. McGuill
I do not know. That would be a question that a future inquiry may wish to address.
In section 11 of your submission you mention, in particular, that a loyalist was arrested in Scotland on explosives charges within a month of the 1974 bombings. You then say, "However, the type of explosive involved was not mentioned". What are you concerns about this particular case in 1974?
Mr. McGuill
The point I am trying to raise here is that I do not think you can necessarily draw an inference, unless there is more information, as to what sort of explosives were being smuggled and their quantities. I do not think one can assume that a sufficient type and quantity of explosives to carry out the 1974 bombings were capable of coming in. The other historic experiences of loyalist smuggling operations were bordering on the amateur. The explosives came from various different coal mines and sometimes they were of very bad quality; the gelignite was in a dangerous state and was abandoned in some cases. They do not seem to have had a sufficient quantity or had a regular source of supply in order to carry out operations of that magnitude
In his submission, in the section entitled Allegations of Collusion, Mr. McGuill presents a very strong case where he mentions the Iran-Contra hearings and the 1980 Bologna train station bombs. He also provides concrete examples of illegal security force activities and dirty tricks and refers to Frank Kitson's MRF assassination squads in 1972. Is he saying, contrary to the commonly held view, that these types of activity were common in the 1970s and 1980s by elements of the security forces, not just with the British Government, but with other governments and states?
Mr. McGuill
That is a strong possibility.
It is more than a possibility, is it not?
Mr. McGuill
Yes, I think it is. My research into that period - I have talked to members of British intelligence about this - was that following the 1973 Yom Kippur war and the increase in oil prices, western governments felt that their backs were to the wall. There was Euro-terrorism in countries like Italy, Germany and France. Rightly or wrongly, they alleged that this formed part of the conspiracy, given that there were specific instances in the mid-1970s. I do not know if intelligence organisations would carry out such activities now, or whether they would have carried them out in the 1960s or 1950s. However, I believe they felt under severe pressure and threat in the mid-1970s and were prepared to countenance actions that perhaps ordinarily they would not.
Mr. Cooper mentioned the Warrington bomb incident. Does he consider it is a commonly held view among the Northern minority and among nationalists on the island generally that they are treated differently to other people, and that in terms of sympathy for victims, particularly nationalist victims, they do not get equality and fair play? Would that be the view of the INC?
Mr. Cooper
It most certainly would. I remember I went down to the GPO that night, when the two boys died in Warrington, Tim Parry and the other one. I noticed a group of people from the North who had placards. One of them had a placard which stated: "Our children were murdered also. Are our children, children of a lesser God?" Some of the people who were marching through O'Connell Street from Parnell Square, spat at these people and told them to go back to the North. That was not an isolated case or an isolated incident. I have been involved with the Irish National Congress for about 11 years now. I have attended demonstrations, protests and marches in connection with Robert Hamill, Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson and Aidan McAnaspie. I found, when I was leafleting on the streets or looking for signatures outside the GPO, that I was subjected to much simply because I was a member of the Irish National Congress and we were taking up the cause of nationalists in the Six Counties. I honestly believe that while nationalists in the North were "killed", people from the other tradition were "murdered".
Yes, I understand. Do you believe that to be the case?
Mr. Cooper
I certainly do.
It would be the commonly held view. On the collusion question, would you accept and is it your considered view and the INC's position that the reality is that when you look at the allegations and the evidence on what happened at the farm in Glenanne, in Market Hill, and the fact that security force services were directly involved, that it is not just a question of collusion but actually a question of direct involvement?
Mr. McGuill
It is back down to the question of policy. Was this allowed to happen? Was this part of an overall policy in which loyalists were used as proxy forces to do the work which, if British forces were to do it, would land those forces in hot water internationally. Only a couple of years before the Irish State had taken the British State to the European Court in Strasbourg on allegations of inhuman and degrading treatment, and won. If Britain was to have operate a straightforward death squad policy, the Irish State would probably try to prosecute it again on these issues, whereas if it is hidden behind a loyalist force, then there is a layer of deniability.
I also welcome Tom and Paul and thank them for their written submission and contributions. I have two questions, the first of which I will direct at Mr. Cooper. Tom, you gave the Warrington example and stated clearly that the Irish people had remained silent at the time. It is an interesting point you make. You indicated that there were no public marches as in other cases, yet this was the greatest atrocity in the history of the State. Can you give your own opinion on the climate at the time which enabled the non-expression of public outrage in 1974 following the bombings?
Mr. Cooper
Could you elaborate?
Have you formulated your own conclusions as to why there was a very obvious silence among the public at large? There seems to have been silence and a non-expression of outrage by the people of Ireland. Why was that the case?
Mr. Cooper
I would imagine it partly stemmed from the make-up of the Coalition Government of 1973-77.
Do not mention any names.
Mr. Cooper
I will put it this way. Shortly after the Dublin and Monaghan bombings I was part of a group that picketed the British Embassy. I believe that I had, not only a right but an obligation - if the Government was not going to do anything - to make my voice heard by the British Government because we believed at a very early stage that it had either direct or indirect involvement, through loyalist paramilitaries or whatever, in the bombings. A number of us were there and an incident happened. Car numbers were taken by Garda special branch. Subsequently, homes were raided. This filtered out to people who would generally come along and either go on a protest march or picket the British Embassy. We were made feel like criminals. That filtered down, I believe, to people who would be generally politically active. The fact that the Government of the time showed little interest, as was outlined in the Barron report, I believe filtered down to the general public.
To fast-forward slightly to Bloody Sunday, all of Ireland closed down within a couple of weeks. On a Monday, factories and shops closed and there were marches throughout the country. The climate had changed slightly at that stage. Why was that not initiated by the State? They gave a day off and asked industry to close down for a day as a mark of respect for those who had been killed in Derry on Bloody Sunday. Nothing happened for the people of Dublin and Monaghan. It was the biggest mass murder in the history of this State and they were ignored for very many years afterwards. People like me, and people in the Irish National Congress, who had taken up issues such as Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Robert Hamill and so forth were isolated. In particular, at the Warrington march people were spat at when they asked: "What about our children?". Our children were being murdered in the North. If a member of my family had been killed in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, I would have been outraged by the lack of action by the Government of the time. They had a duty to lead people. They did not. In that, they failed miserably.
My second question is for Mr. McGuill and relates to the MA thesis he conducted on the violence in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. This may be a very broad question. In his research for the thesis, what relevant information about the bombings and the general climate of the time did he come across which is particularly relevant to the work of the sub-committee?
Mr. McGuill
It is a very broad question. I will try to answer it as best I can. The sub-committee will be familiar with a lot of the information, which the sub-committee probably would have heard or which would have been submitted, either to the Barron inquiry or to the sub-committee. The sub-committee would be familiar with much of the factual information.
In terms of the climate of the time, the political ramifications of the bombing were that it marked the end of the coalition Government's diplomatic initiatives, that it deterred Irish Governments for a number of years, possibly up to Charles Haughey's teapot summit in 1979, from taking any diplomatic initiatives or involving itself diplomatically with Northern Ireland. From then on, there were those who advocated a security response and this was followed by the Criminal Law (Jurisdiction) Act and allegations regarding the heavy gang. The Act is the only part of the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement that survived that week in May. The governmental attitude changed towards Northern Ireland in which there was a fatalistic acceptance of frustration. People gave up on the diplomatic approach.
Mr. McGuill and Mr. Cooper, thank you very much for making a presentation today. We are very grateful to you.
We will now ask Mr. John Paul McMahon, retired Assistant Garda Commissioner to join us. I thank you very much for accepting the invitation of the sub-committee. I understand you were the chief superintendent at the time of the Monaghan bombing and that you achieved high office in the Garda afterwards. Before you start, can I remind you, as I have all of the people who have come before us, that the members of the sub-committee enjoy parliamentary privilege but that same privilege does not apply to yourself.
You have made a submission to us. I know that it is possible that we would go directly into questions on it but I would appreciate if you wish to make any pertinent points on it to set a context to your appearance.
Mr. John Paul McMahon There is nothing I wish to add, Chairman. I have made a written presentation and I would be quite happy to provide any assistance I might be in a position to offer.
Thank you very much.
I welcome Mr. McMahon to our hearings.
Before you start, it has been agreed in this case that Senator Jim Walsh and Deputy Costello will ask the questions on behalf of the sub-committee.
Will Mr. McMahon set the scene for us? Could he tell us when he was chief superintendent, how long he was in Monaghan, when he became Assistant Garda Commissioner, whether he retired as assistant commissioner and what year he retired?
Mr. McMahon
I was appointed to Monaghan as chief superintendent in March 1972 and I was there until 1976, a period of four years. I was then transferred to stage 3, as it is known at headquarters, for about two years and then was in charge of special branch in Dublin Castle for about another two years. I was appointed assistant commissioner in 1979 and deputy commissioner in 1984. I retired in 1991.
I apologise to Mr. McMahon for saying he was assistant commissioner, as he was deputy commissioner.
Mr. McMahon
That is not necessary, thank you.
I refer Mr. McMahon to page 111 of the inquiry and, in particular, the comments attributed to Detective Inspector Colm Browne, which stated——
Mr. McMahon
What page is that?
Perhaps I have the wrong page but Colm Browne is quoted that after the information was passed to Dublin from the Monaghan bombings——
What page is that?
I thought it was page 111. The reference is not appearing but it is in the report. Is it on the top?
It is the second paragraph.
It says that, after the information, the pursuit of the suspects, once the report was sent to Dublin, was then a matter for Dublin and not for the gardaí in Monaghan. Would that be Mr. McMahon's statement to us? Did he have any further involvement in the inquiries into the Monaghan bombing after that date?
Mr. McMahon
It was, as the Senator says, a matter for the chief superintendents in charge of the investigation, who were based in Dublin at the time. They were co-ordinating all the bombings of that period.
Is Mr. McMahon saying that after that date, once the report went from Monaghan to Dublin, the gardaí and himself, as chief superintendent, in Monaghan had no further involvement in investigating the crime?
Mr. McMahon
No, I would not go that far. The main investigation was concluded at that stage and the results were forwarded in an appropriate document. Anything that might emerge subsequent to that would be investigated and there would be ongoing inquiries of anything that might have a bearing on the bombings.
But Mr. McMahon had certain leads in the report he sent to Dublin. Did he actively pursue those subsequent to sending the report or did he leave that entirely to Dublin?
Mr. McMahon
We left most of that to the people in Dublin.
Was that unusual? Normally the Garda will, within a certain jurisdiction, investigate the crimes in that area and will pursue them, reporting progress further up the line. Was that unusual? Why was that?
Mr. McMahon
It was unusual in that there were bombs in Dublin and Monaghan and they were all claimed to be interlinked and, for the proper investigation of the bombings, it was thought that it would be better to approach it on a co-ordinated basis——
From Dublin.
Mr. McMahon
——and not for Dublin to be moving on one track and for Monaghan to be moving off on another. There should be a joint operation.
There were other bombing attempts in that jurisdiction, the Cavan-Monaghan area, subsequently, and I am sure there were incidents prior to that as well. Would Mr. McMahon have pursued to a conclusion an examination of the investigation or would he have sent it to Dublin for them to pursue further? Was this unique?
Mr. McMahon
We would have pursued it to a conclusion.
So in regard to this incident, was this a unique situation?
Mr. McMahon
It was to some extent in that the overall control of the bombs, explosions, were being co-ordinated by the officers in Dublin.
Can you give us any rationale for that? While there may have been a link, to some extent independent investigations immediately following the atrocity were probably more likely to be fruitful rather than bringing them all together and pursuing just the one investigation? Would you concur?
Mr. McMahon
We did pursue it on our own, up to a point.
That was only up to June or July.
Mr. McMahon
Yes, and even subsequent to that if anything arose. In so far as engaging in any activities which might have impinged on the North was concerned, particularly concerning suspects, it was deemed more appropriate that there should be a pooling of resources, a pooling of information. One would have been in a better position to undertake a better investigation when all the information had been collated.
In the light of experience - I suppose it is easy to be wise with 20:20 vision - having served your career as a professional police officer and given the lack of any further progress in relation to either the Dublin or Monaghan investigation, do you think it would have been wiser to have kept them separate at the time and just had an over-arching sharing of information?
Mr. McMahon
I think it would be unwise for them to move independently of each other. There should be co-operation; there should be a pooling of resources and a pooling of information. A pooling of information is vitally important.
I accept that. However, the whole investigation, not just information, was pooled together. In the light of the subsequent lack of progress in the investigations - I know this is with the benefit of hindsight - would it have been better if they had been maintained separately? That might have been more fruitful.
Mr. McMahon
I do not think so. I think the problem was largely due to the fact that the suspects were known at the time to be located outside the jurisdiction. That was the major impediment as far as the subsequent investigation was concerned.
I refer you to page 83 of the report to information concerning a named UDA member. It reads: "In August 1975, a confidential Garda memo said that a man allegedly connected with the UDA in the Newtownhamilton area of County Armagh was suspected in his own area of having been involved in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings". The last sentence reads: "The Assistant Commissioner wrote to the Chief Superintendent for Cavan/Monaghan [I presume that was yourself]——
Mr. McMahon
Yes.
——on 25 September 1975 seeking to know whether any further information had come to light, but there is no record of any reply." Do you have any light to throw on that?
Mr. McMahon
I am afraid not, really. I have no recollection of that correspondence. I would be inclined to presume that any correspondence that arrived in Monaghan from headquarters would have been responded to. I would have thought this would have been revealed if the correspondence register for that period had been examined. There should be an entry to that effect.
Let me go further down that page: "Also in May 1976, information emerged during a trial of a UVF member to suggest that UVF member Robert Bridges may have been involved in the 1974 Dublin bombings". Then go to the last paragraph on the page: "An internal Garda memo dated 1 July 1975 records a request that Bridges be questioned in relation to the Belturbet, Swanlinbar, Pettigo and Clones bombings". The date is 1 July 1975.
Mr. McMahon
Yes.
We have a report dated 29 June 1974 which was, again, to yourself as chief superintendent in Monaghan, from Superintendent Giblin, which attributes——
Mr. McMahon, this is in the report which counsel gave you earlier today.
Mr. McMahon
Yes.
This attributes the Clones bombing, in all probability, to IRA suspects.
Mr. McMahon
Yes.
How do you square this with, in 1975, pursuing Bridges for that occurrence?
Mr. McMahon
What is the point you are making?
The Barron report, on page 83, refers to Robert Bridges who as a member of the UVF was being pursued. An internal memo of June 1974 attributes the Clones bombing to the IRA.
Mr. McMahon
Yes. I do not see any inconsistency in that, except alone that Bridges, of course, is a member of the UVF.
That was in June 1974, and I think this was more or less an interim report on the Clones bombing. You were chief superintendent during all of that period. What subsequently emerged in the 12 months following that report in relation to the Clones bombing?
In relation to that, were there two bombings in Clones around that time?
Mr. McMahon
There were, one was at a meat factory on the Border, Tunney's meat factory, and the other was in Fermanagh Street.
They could have been referring to those bombings——
Mr. McMahon
They could, yes.
——but you are not sure.
Let Mr. McMahon answer the question.
I am just trying to clarify——
Mr. McMahon
I do not know to which of the two bombings he is referring. The one at Fermanagh Street was thought at the time to be the work of the IRA. This, of course, would be inconsistent with this information but it is also conceivable that the UVF may have carried it out because there may be a suspicion but we have no solid facts. We have nothing substantial to support the suspicion.
It was inconclusive, effectively.
Mr. McMahon
Yes.
In general terms - I think you were not there during the making of the Yorkshire Television programme——
Mr. McMahon
No.
Subsequently, as assistant commissioner or deputy commissioner - I think you said you were attached to the special branch at one stage for two years——
Mr. McMahon
Yes, I worked there for a few years.
Were you involved in any further investigation of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings during the course of your subsequent career within the Garda Síochána?
Mr. McMahon
No, I was not. I think a file passed through me at one instance all right but that was all, as I can recall.
Let me refer you to paragraph 9 on page 4 of your submission. It reads, "I would like to place on record that the prohibition on gardaí in communicating with British army personnel was not ignored but strictly applied".
Mr. McMahon
Yes.
Were there any breaches?
Mr. McMahon
There was, the next sentence reveals a breach.
Was this the one with Detective McCoy?
Mr. McMahon
No, it was not Detective McCoy. I carried on from there: "As an instance of this, I recall a case where I found it necessary to report a member for associating with a British Army officer, in consequence of which the Garda member was transferred from the Border".
Let me ask you about Detective Sergeant McCoy who apparently arranged for a British army officer to meet Captain Trears, I think, at his home. What knowledge did you have of this prior to the event occurring?
Gentlemen——
It is actually mentioned in the report.
I just want to be careful——
I know that. I am conscious of it. It is page 195——
——that nothing is said that would in any way impute or impugn his character or anything of that nature.
I am anxious to avoid that.
You might be putting Mr. McMahon in a position where he may not be able to answer it on that basis.
May I refer to page 195 of the report?
Mr. McMahon
I have no difficulties with that, Chairman. I would prefer to answer it in fact. The Senator asked when I heard it first, that was 12 years after the event. The Army authorities brought it to the notice of the Garda authorities.
On what date did that happen, as a matter of interest? Was that subsequent to you being in Monaghan?
Mr. McMahon
It was 12 years afterwards, in 1986.
Were you deputy commissioner at the time?
Mr. McMahon
I was chief superintendent in the special branch at the time.
That would obviously have been a breach of your strict code.
Mr. McMahon
It was, indeed, yes.
Did you read anything into it, subsequently when you found out?
Mr. McMahon
The only thing I would read into that part of the sentence is that it was due to over zealousness on the part of Garda McCoy in trying to collect intelligence in relation to loyalist paramilitaries. We had very little information on loyalist paramilitaries at that time because we had virtually none of them living in our midst south of the Border, so we tried to obtain whatever information we could from the North. I think, in a sense, maybe partially on my own part, we might have put a lot of pressure on detectives to collect that information and perhaps Garda McCoy was possibly responding to that pressure and trying to resort to any means he could to collect information on loyalists.
Commandant Frears may enlighten us further in regard to this matter later. However, did it trouble Mr. McMahon that a garda in the area would have this connection and would bring a British army officer to an Army officer? The purpose of this, based on the evidence in the report, was that the Army officer would continue to pass on information on some matters to the British army person.
Mr. McMahon
It would trouble me and, as I have indicated, I reported another member for a lesser association with a British army officer, the consequence of which he was disciplined and transferred from Monaghan to Dublin.
Was Mr. McMahon familiar with the British army officer and his activities in the Border area?
Mr. McMahon
British army officers in general or——
No, this British army officer.
Mr. McMahon
No, I had no knowledge of his existence.
Subsequently, did Mr. McMahon have knowledge of his activities while he was in the Garda? Does he know who I am speaking about?
Mr. McMahon
Is the Senator speaking about Holroyd?
No, I am not.
Mr. McMahon
Yes, I know.
Can I mention Peter Maynard? I am not sure.
The Senator should speak in general terms. We are not holding an inquiry.
There are allegations against this particular British army person. He maybe even had a close association with the Glennane group. If that information was known, Cavan-Monaghan was the most likely Garda jurisdiction in which it was to be known.
Mr. McMahon
Yes, but there were divisions which were more proximate to Northern Ireland. The only thing I learned afterwards was what I read in inquiries and so forth.
In case there is a misunderstanding, Mr. McMahon said in paragraph 5, page 3, of his submission to the sub-committee in regard to the Barron report that he failed to see why Holroyd's version should be favoured in the report over McCoy's account.
Mr. McMahon
That is right.
Part of the purpose of my questions was to test that. I have two final questions. In page 5 of his submission, Mr. McMahon referred to page 275 of the report and states: "It is alleged that the State was not equipped to conduct adequate forensic analysis because its importance was not appreciated. This is incorrect in so far as the Garda Síochána is concerned." The report outlines areas where the bomb sites would have come immediately under the control of the Garda. Mr. McMahon will accept that. There is a statement that there was a certain reason they were washed but the washing of the sites to the extent it happened may have destroyed some evidence. The report refers to the broken chain of command in handling the forensic evidence and the material, particularly that went to Belfast, and the delay in submitting in that. All those areas were in the absolute remit of the Garda. Mr. McMahon is challenging Mr. Justice Barron's report in that regard, yet the report supports his conclusions in these areas.
Mr. McMahon
In so far as the chain of evidence is concerned, I think that is separate from the examination of the scene and forensics in general. I am not sure that there was a breach in the chain of command in that instance. I know that Alan Hall in Belfast says he got from Detective Jones of the technical bureau the sample in question. I think that is the one you are referring to. Jones has no recollection of taking it to Belfast and there is supposed to be some intermediary involved. I know both individuals. I know Alan Hall of the forensic science laboratory in the North. I must say I have always found him straightforward and I would be inclined to accept his evidence. I do not know of any reason why Jones should give false evidence. I think, perhaps, it is a trick of memory over the years with one or the other. I doubt very much if there was any breach in the chain of evidence in that respect because that is virtually the whole time occupation of the technical bureau. They are very conscious of the compelling need to retain the chain of evidence and I have never known there to be a breach in that unit.
This is an important point. Are you saying specifically it is your evaluation of the quality of the officers rather than specific knowledge of the incident itself that is leading you to that conclusion?
Mr. McMahon
Yes, knowledge of the officers.
In the next paragraph you say:
With reference to comments in the report relating to the Garda declining to participate in an interview with the RUC, the views expressed by Mr. Cooney, former Minister for Justice, at page 117 of the report should have been taken into account.
These things happened in 1974 and 1975. Mr. Cooney's comments only came about in the recent past when he met Judge Barron. You are applying almost 30 years later a retrospective opinion given by the Minister for Justice at the time. It was also clear from the Garda Commissioner's and Mr. Cooney's evidence that the Garda had never, at any stage, sought permission from the Government with regard to assistance in the investigation. Therefore, how can you rely on Mr. Cooney's statement, from the Garda perspective?
Mr. McMahon
First of all, Mr. Cooney's evidence relates to the period we are discussing, 1974. He gave that evidence before the Barron team. The Barron team would be familiar with it and there should be no difficulty in their relating to it.
He does say, "Such a request might well have to be refused..." He, equally, made it clear before us that the request had never come before him. That is the point I am making.
Mr. McMahon
There was a problem about doing police work in Northern Ireland. It was another jurisdiction and we did encounter difficulties there. It was made evident at one stage that we were not welcome there. This was conveyed to us as representing the views of higher authority in Belfast.
When was that?
Mr. McMahon
There is a reference to it in the Barron report. I think it is on page 116.
It is the second last paragraph which reads, "...received a warning that the presence of gardaí interviewing witnesses in Northern Ireland was resented and that it was something which the senior administration..." Who would have given that warning? Do you know?
Mr. McMahon
I expect it was given by whatever officers met the team from the South who went North on that occasion. It does not say it there but we were aware of sensitivities of that nature. We did not have any rights in Northern Ireland to conduct any inquiries or investigations there. If we went there, we would be going on sufferance. That was a major restriction in so far as any investigations were concerned.
Would that statement have come from the conversation between Mr. Justice Barron and you or from other sources?
Mr. McMahon
It would be other sources.
I thank Mr. McMahon for coming here and speaking to us. My colleague, Senator Walsh, has gone through many of the issues, so I will be more brief. I refer Mr. McMahon to the general statement by Justice Barron on page 8, which states:
Although C/Supt. J. P McMahon was the officer in charge in Cavan/Monaghan at the time, the investigation there was conducted by officers from the Dublin investigation team led by D/Sgt Colm Browne - an officer with considerable experience investigating subversive crimes in the Border counties.
Would it be normal that a Dublin officer would take over the investigation from, say, yourself?
Mr. McMahon
It would in a murder case. I often did something of a similar kind when I was in the murder squad. We would go from Dublin and take over an investigation.
He then goes on to say that Mr. McMahon devoted his energies to enhancing security with a view to preventing further attacks.
Mr. McMahon
That and other things. I was still in charge of a division. I did the normal administrative duties. There was also a sharp level of continuous violence, in addition to bombings. Other matters had to be attended to. I recall that the bombings occurred on Friday and the following Monday I was in Dublin in the Special Criminal Court. On Thursday, I was in Portadown in connection with the bombings. The following day I was back in Swanlinbar in regard to a shooting at the Garda station and another bombing incident. The following day I was at Moybridge, a cross-Border point where there had been some cross-Border shootings. Moybridge is located between Monaghan and Aughnacloy. There were many other matters to be attended to.
One must give either one's all or nothing to a murder investigation. There is no piecemeal effort. From my point of view, I wanted to keep in touch with the investigation to make sure it was progressing smoothly and that it had all the facilities I could afford them.
Mr. McMahon kept an eye on things as they were developing.
Mr. McMahon
Yes.
When the bomb exploded in Monaghan, Detective Garda Niland was on the spot that evening. Was Mr. McMahon present at any stage that evening after the bomb exploded?
Mr. McMahon
Yes, I was there within minutes of the bomb going off. I was at the Garda station, which was just a few hundred yards from the bomb. I went there immediately. I was one of the first people to arrive there.
In 1967 Mr. McMahon took over as chief of the technical bureau.
Mr. McMahon
I did.
So he was in charge of forensics for the Garda.
Mr. McMahon
That is correct.
Can he describe the scene then? He would have technical experience and knowledge of the forensic requirements. How did he cordon off the area and collect debris? Did he take charge of that area?
Mr. McMahon
No, I did not take charge of it. We had dedicated members who were experts in so far as——
Did they come from Dublin or were they there already?
Mr. McMahon
They came from Dublin. Detective Garda Niland was attached——
Prior to that Mr. McMahon was there within minutes. How did he secure the actual scene immediately?
Mr. McMahon
I took charge of it. The first thing we did was look after the injured and the wounded. When that was taken care of, the next immediate action was to preserve the scene. Gardaí were guards placed at the scene so as not to allow anybody to disturb the scene or interfere with it in any way.
Would Mr. McMahon say - I am sure he can only given an opinion at this stage - that the scene was better preserved in Monaghan than in Dublin?
Mr. McMahon
I do not know about the Dublin bombings but I can assure you that it is a matter of high priority in a murder case and, indeed, for any investigation - the more serious the crime, the more strict it is and the more important it is. A lot of importance would be attached to preserving that scene, and rightly so.
Given his experience in the technical bureau, does Mr. McMahon know whether any material that arrived for forensic examination three days later, or 11 days later in the case of Mr. Hall in Belfast, was of much value?
Mr. McMahon
I was concerned on those occasions that we had the experts who specialise in this area.
Was Mr. McMahon not the expert in this area? He was in charge of the technical bureau from 1967.
Mr. McMahon
Yes, but in the detective area, we had a lot of specialities - fingerprints, ballistics, etc.
Did Mr. McMahon know about the general need to speedily obtain material for forensic examination in order to preserve the authenticity of the debris etc.?
Mr. McMahon
Quite so, but we would of necessity have had to wait for the experts to come from Dublin because they were the people who would know what to look for and what to take possession of. They would also be expert in the handling of it. I am sure that they would have maintained their integrity.
On page 66, the report states that a number of items from Monaghan were received from Mr. Hall, including parts of the car bomb. Was Mr. McMahon or the Dublin people responsible for those being taken to Mr. Hall?
Mr. McMahon
No, they would have been taken back to the technical bureau. It was the responsibility of the technical bureau at that stage. That was the normal procedure.
Mr. McMahon's submission is at odds with the allegation in the Barron report that an area on the Border between Monaghan and Newry was frozen through the activities of Detective Garda Jim McCoy of the Monaghan station. He states categorically that this could not have happened.
Mr. McMahon
Yes, I would have.
When I say "frozen", I mean frozen to any Garda or Army involvement so that the UDA or otherwise could operate in that area, as was the suggestion. Is Mr. McMahon saying that could not have happened?
Mr. McMahon
Yes, that is my contention. It is a very grave allegation and would amount to an act of treachery against the State, one might say, if that was to take place. I cannot conceive of any situation how it could have occurred. There is no evidence. The only evidence comes from one individual and I think I have shown, in the first few pages of that report, that his credibility does not stand up to much examination. There were a number of other incidents where I have shown he has been proved false.
Did Detective Garda McCoy have any special powers or qualities? It is strange that an ordinary detective garda could even make such an allegation or that Mr. Holroyd would allege he had the power to do that.
We must be careful in so far as the character of a particular person could be impugned.
It is not so much the character but the statement that-——
That might be the case if you had not identified the man but had just said "a detective garda". Now, we are stuck and should not reflect on the character of that particular person.
In Mr. McMahon's opinion, would any gardaí operating in the Monaghan station have any such authority? Is he suggesting it would have been an incredible, impossible situation?
Mr. McMahon
I was a senior member in Monaghan station and I would not have that authority. It goes outside Cavan-Monaghan division and that is not only supposed to control Garda action but also to take charge of the Army. This garda was at the lowest rank in the force. It does not bear contemplation.
He would have been acting under your authority, so Mr. McMahon would be the man in charge at that stage.
Mr. McMahon
Yes, in overall authority.
In relation to the same item, in page 1 Mr. McMahon states that the particular officer is not trustworthy and that Mr. Holroyd'saccount could not be trustworthy but on page 3, second last paragraph, he states: "I fail to see why Holroyd's version should be favoured in the report over McCoy's account." If Garda McCoy is already discredited, surely in terms of these outrageous allegations he has made——
Garda McCoy is not discredited in any way. Can we refrain from mentioning names? We are into territory where I do not want to have to interrupt people.
If there is a statement on page 1 saying that there could not be any freezing of the Border, because no officer would have the power to do that, then obviously if a particular individual alleges that this particular officer did it, Mr. McMahon sees merit in this officer's account of events in this case but no merit in what the officer is alleged to have done in a different situation. It is a discrepancy and I wonder if you can——
Mr. McMahon
It was quite easy for me to make that differentiation. I have known the officer concerned, of whom you are speaking, for a number of years and I know he is a hard-working conscientious man of impeccable background, apart from this one particular incident, the first time he ever came under unfavourable notice. The other man, whose word the Barron report seems to have taken in preference to that individual, is a man whom I have shown, in a number of incidences - if you want to refer to him in that report - has told falsehoods. I think I have clearly demonstrated that.
I will not explore that any further. I wish to raise two other points and then I will conclude. With regard to the investigating report, we have a rather unique situation that the only contemporary document relating to 1974 is the investigating report from Monaghan. Is it correct to say that Mr. McMahon signed that report? Even though the investigation took place from a Dublin team, the investigating report from the Dublin team itself is not to be found in the Garda files. Does Mr. McMahon have any memory of the circumstances in which the final report from Monaghan - it was described as the final report - happened and how it might be in the files, whereas the other report, or reports, are missing? The security report for the Monaghan area is available but security reports for other areas are missing.
Mr. McMahon
Speaking for Monaghan, we submitted the Monaghan report to headquarters and that report is available, seemingly. I am not in a position to answer in so far as the Dublin reports are concerned because I would have been in Monaghan at the time and have no knowledge of them. I never saw the Dublin reports.
Did you maintain a copy of the Monaghan report back at the Cavan-Monaghan——
Mr. McMahon
I should think so, yes.
Could that possibly be the report that is now available in Garda files, a copy as distinct from the original?
Mr. McMahon
I do not know that but if I retained a report - I think it very likely I would have done so - it would be retained at the Monaghan Garda station. As to what its present position is I do not know.
Would Mr. McMahon maintain that that would be the policy?
Mr. McMahon
Yes, I would be quite satisfied on that score.
Did Mr. McMahon have any contact with C3?
Mr. McMahon
I was transferred to C3 from Monaghan in 1976.
Files were missing there as well. What was the system of file-keeping in that area?
Mr. McMahon
There was an officer assigned to the keeping of files, which I was not specifically concerned with. I am afraid at this stage in particular I would have no knowledge of the details.
The files would have contained very sensitive material on subversive activity and the various activities that were going on at the time. Was there a particular mechanism of security in place? Was there an officer directly assigned who was answerable to you? Were you in charge of it at the time?
Mr. McMahon
No, I was second in charge. I was the assistant commissioner in charge.
Who was commissioner at that time?
Mr. McMahon
Assistant Commissioner Wren.
Was there a specific officer in charge of security of files and so on?
Mr. McMahon
We were all dealing with security matters. It was specifically a security section and we catered for matters of a security nature only, collecting intelligence etc.
We have information that Detective Crinnion was subsequently arrested allegedly with sensitive documentation from C3.
Mr. McMahon
Detective Crinnion.
Yes.
Mr. McMahon
Yes, that is right. He was arrested. I was in Monaghan at the time. I am not quite sure what year it was but it was sometime between 1972 and 1976.
Would it be possible for an ordinary detective to get access to files in C3 in Mr. McMahon's time if he was not working on a case?
Mr. McMahon
Nobody would gain access to the files except those who were working in C3 at the time. In some cases, of course, files were transmitted to other sections of the force.
How large were the files? Would they have been voluminous? During what period was Mr. McMahon there?
Mr. McMahon
I was there from 1976 to 1978.
That would have been immediately after this period.
Mr. McMahon
That is right.
How large would the files have been on——
Mr. McMahon
They could vary from anything to a single sheet up to maybe 40 or 50 sheets of foolscap paper, or even more.
Does Mr. McMahon recollect the files on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings?
Mr. McMahon
That is right. Some files could go to hundreds of pages. It depended on the amount of work that went into the particular incident that is referred to in the file.
Does Mr. McMahon have any specific recollection of seeing that file or has he any idea of its size?
Mr. McMahon
Which file is that?
The Dublin Monaghan bombings file.
Mr. McMahon
No. I never saw that.
On the overall picture, is it Mr. McMahon's assertion that the Garda conducted a thorough investigation?
Mr. McMahon
I think the Garda conducted a thorough investigation up to a particular point and then it was confronted with what one might call a brick wall in the sense that further investigation would have to be conducted in Northern Ireland. If we were to compare that to a suspect being located in Northern Ireland, if they were located in some other centre in the South, say, Cork or Galway, I could see the principal investigators moving to that city, setting up office and conducting further investigations which could well take much longer. It could take a month or two months to pursue that part of the investigation.
Thank you, Mr. McMahon, for attending the sub-committee and giving us that insight into the way the gardaí operated in the Monaghan area.
Mr. McMahon
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You are now excused. We will now proceed to hear from representatives of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. I welcome Ms Tanya Ward, Ms Aisling Reidy and Mr. Conor Power. You are very welcome here this afternoon. Thank your for your submission. Before you begin, I must state that all members of the sub-committee have parliamentary privilege, but that privilege does not extend to yourselves. The format is that you will have ten minutes between you to make your presentation, after which there will be questions for 15 or 20 minutes.
Mr. Conor Power
Thank you for hearing a submission from the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. We are here particularly to advise on the general law that we believe should inform the sub-committee's decision regarding the recommendations on the fifth module, particularly on the holding of a public inquiry. We are familiar with the submissions made by the British-Irish Rights Watch and Justice for the Forgotten. We strongly back the call they have made for a public inquiry. They made their call on the basis of certain factual details. We are making ours on a somewhat different basis. We are not a fact-finding body and have no pretension to being one.
However, we remind the sub-committee of the State's obligations, in particular under the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 2 of the convention protects the right to life. Article 13 protects the right to an effective investigation. Those rights taken together have led to certain case law from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg regarding the obligations of a state to hold an effective investigation into certain matters that have led to the death of citizens. In particular, for example, regarding the case of the Gibraltar Three, in McCann and others v. United Kingdom, and in the decisions of Finucance v. the United Kingdom, the European Court of Human Rights has been very strong on the obligations of a state.
Ireland is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights since its inception in 1955, and was a party to it at the time the bombings were committed. So too was the United Kingdom. Since then, the protections give to citizens under the European Convention on Human Rights have been increased by the Oireachtas, in that since 1 January last, the terms of the convention have been incorporated into our law. That makes it even more incumbent on a sub-committee such as this, when considering questions regarding the effectiveness of an investigation of an incident that has caused such mass destruction, as this incident clearly did, to consider holding a public inquiry. This is also backed up by Article 40 of the Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, which also protects the right to life and guarantees the right to an effective redress and investigation where such rights have been taken away. While I am referring to case law from the European Court of Human Rights, it would be commonly accepted that this would also relate to the provisions of the Constitution, though it has not necessarily arisen for decision in that regard.
The ICCL submits that in reaching its conclusion as to whether a public inquiry is warranted, the sub-committee should address two particular matters, which are set out in the submission. For ease of reference I will set them out now. The question about the inquiry and the Barron report in particular is whether the inquiry had sufficient powers to investigate all avenues of suspicion relating to the perpetrators of the bombings, and any suspected covering up, and to secure evidence necessary to reach its determinations. The second question is whether there are additional powers which a tribunal of public inquiry would enjoy, that could further elucidate who the perpetrators were, or whether there was evidence of state involvement in the bombings, prior knowledge that the bombings would take place, or steps to prevent the identification and prosecution of the perpetrators.
This arises because of three findings and questions that arise from the Barron interim report. Why was the Garda inquiry in 1974 so short? How did essential files come to be missing, so that they were not available to the Barron inquiry? Why was the essential forensic evidence not collated and preserved? Furthermore, why were there avenues of evidence available which did not appear to have been adequately or robustly pursued?
These questions lead on to a consideration of the obligations of a state regarding a public inquiry. I know that the British-Irish Rights Watch and Justice for the Forgotten in particular have made detailed submissions based on the facts. I will not go into that. This sub-committee should consider whether an inquiry would produce an effective result in the context of the State's obligations. If that is concluded - I urge that serious consideration be given to that, and have no doubt the sub-committee will do so - and if there is to be a public inquiry, it must have central features which, in the ICCL submission to the sub-committee, were not features of the Barron inquiry. A different body would investigate the allegations on the shortness of the Garda investigation, etc., if this sub-committee were to conclude that was the case and that its finding and those of the Barron inquiry were inadequate. In that case, the sub-committee should set out clear parameters. For example, it should state that the inquiry to be established, whether under the Tribunals of Evidence Act 1921 or otherwise, should be independent.
This raises other interesting questions. In my submission, I indicated that independence must be guaranteed and that a tribunal must be seen as both independent from Irish and British authorities. It should, perhaps, become an outside authority. I do not suggest, however, that the inquiry itself should be a cross-national inquiry. That is a different issue which may raise other different issues relating to the effectiveness of the inquiry. According to the second criterion set down by the European Court of Human Rights, any investigation set up to redress obligations under Articles 2 and 13 of the convention must be effective. If it was a cross-Border inquiry, given the attitude taken by the British authorities to the release of certain files, the tribunal might become bogged down in such issues and delayed. If it were delayed to such an extent that it was not a proper inquiry, the obligations of the State under Articles 2 and 13 would not be met even by its establishment. I submit to the sub-committee that this is an important matter which it should keep in mind in its considerations.
The promptness of any inquiry to be held is another consideration referred to by the European Court of Human Rights. If any possible future inquiry were to be established and delayed in quagmires of cross-national and cross-Border issues of law in different states, that might well impact directly on its promptness. Accessibility by victims is another consideration. I would think it is important for transparency reasons for victims to be consulted in advance of the establishment of the tribunal, particularly in terms of its operation and personnel. The tribunal, to give it that name, would also have to be subject to public scrutiny. This is a core feature of the European case law on Articles 2 and 13 of the convention. Of note is that it is also something that was absent of necessity in the Barron report, which was of an interim nature. Any inquiry which is set up should satisfy that particular requirement.
There is an obligation that any effective tribunal set up to discuss such matters and to make findings should be in a position to offer compensation. In this regard, compensation does not necessarily seem appropriate, nevertheless it is an obligation under the European Convention on Human Rights. It is something that the sub-committee should consider the tribunal should have the power to order.
Ultimately, of course, we are discussing a matter of redress for a wrong committed 30 years ago. The wrong would be the wrong of the State if the tribunal were to find facts to suggest the matter was not adequately investigated. That is for the sub-committee to decide. That must be redressed by an effective public tribunal now. While we are not necessarily calling for that, we respect the fact that others more closely involved and who have made assessments of the facts have called for such inquiries. We wish to make a submission to back that up and to point out obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights.
The sub-committee has agreed that Deputies Hoctor and Peter Power will ask questions of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
I thank Mr. Power and Ms Ward for assisting the sub-committee with its work. The written submission of the council, which the sub-committee received in mid-January, was extremely well drafted and very much welcomed by members. If all of the submissions we have received were in the same format with numbered paragraphs etc., it would have made our work much easier. I compliment the witnesses on that.
I listened carefully to what Mr. Power had to say about the obligation of the State to hold an effective public inquiry in certain circumstances and that the inquiry would have to be effective. Mr. Power went on to say that if that inquiry got bogged down or was not able to proceed through lack of evidence, or it had jurisdictional problems, etc, we as a committee would have to reconsider whether that inquiry was an effective inquiry within the meaning of Articles 2 and 13 of the convention. Am I correct?
Mr. C. Power
I think, with respect, it is more a matter of wanting to draw the committee's attention to a consideration that if the committee was to recommend the establishment of some type of cross-Border inquiry, or an inquiry with certain cross-Border elements, there would be a possibility that, given what has happened and transpired and given some of the findings in the Barron report, it may well get bogged down in inter-jurisdictional questions and questions of releasing certain documents. If that was the case, it might be that the inquiry as established would not match up to the obligations of the State in that regard.
It raises a difficult issue, one that has not as such arisen in European law before. It is something this committee should be cognisant of in making its recommendations in relation to the establishment of a tribunal.
This is a legitimate factor for us to consider when we are deliberating on whether we should make a recommendation.
Mr. C. Power
Absolutely.
That is what I was trying to get at. My second question - I put this to a number of other people - is whether the obligation to hold an inquiry and to provide a remedy, which is the wording in Article 13, to the victims is discharged already by the fact that the State, through the Barron report, has effectively said that it has looked at this issue. It has investigated it and is saying, correct, there was an inadequate Garda inquiry. It did not serve the interests of the victims and all that ought to have been done was not done. Second, the report states in clear and unequivocal terms that there is evidence of collusion, and everyone knows that. This can be drawn as an inference, if not a probability. That is stated in the report. Is the State's obligation now discharged by acknowledging that these things occurred?
Mr. C. Power
I would submit not necessarily. I would submit that it goes some way towards fulfilling the obligations, but it may not get there. In particular, the Barron report, of necessity, was not a public inquiry. While this committee itself has features of a public inquiry, again it is not a public inquiry. That is one of the key features of a tribunal under Articles 2 and 13 of the convention. Moving away from that, there may be broader issues.
Just to stay on that issue for a moment, if we were to conclude that the Barron inquiry made certain conclusions about inadequacy of Garda investigations and if we were then to say that this committee has been - to use the words of the article - the public scrutiny of that report, is the obligation discharged in those circumstances?
Mr. C. Power
No, I would submit not. I would submit that, given the Abbeylara judgment, this sub-committee's powers in relation to compelling witnesses, etc, may well be curtailed. Barron certainly did not have those powers. Barron was not in public. The terms of reference were not set out in consultation with the families. These are key features of a tribunal under Articles 2 and 13. That said - I am not trying to put words in the sub-committee's mouth - it does not necessarily and inexorably mean that there must be a tribunal of inquiry under the Tribunal of Inquiries Evidence Act 1921. Just because certain features of the investigation and of the obligations under Articles 2 and 13 of the convention had not yet been adhered to by the State does not lead in itself to a tribunal of inquiry. It would seem that that would be the most appropriate method of redressing the features of the investigation thus far that have not been in compliance with Article 2 and 13 obligations, but it does not necessarily lead to that. A different type of inquiry could be envisaged by the committee, for example, and set up.
Such as——
Mr. C. Power
That is a matter for the committee. However, the bottom line would be that it be effective, prompt and set up in conjunction with the families, and that it be in a position to offer compensation. In case the committee was worried that the convention obligations, given what has happened in Barron arising out of the terrible events of 1973 and 1974, would lead to the inexorable conclusion of a tribunal, I submit that is not necessarily the case. The committee would be entitled to be imaginative in certain ways about how the investigation should be pursued into the future.
Yes.
Mr. C. Power
The second matter I would have raised, not arising out of the specifics of the events of 1973 and 1974, is in regard to other ongoing matters regarding the Garda Síochána. I am not referring to the issue of Garda accountability or anything like that but, for example, other atrocities, such as the Omagh bombing, have raised issues about the investigative role of the Garda and other public authorities. It may well be that the committee should keep in mind that outside of the specifics of the 1973 and 1974 incidents, there are broader issues of policing and broader issues of how the State itself reacts to such atrocities, and what should be done, that could be addressed in any tribunal set up as a result of the Barron inquiry.
Mr. Power mentioned that one factor we need to take into account when coming to any conclusions is the cross-Border issue. In the context of the convention, another factor is whether such an inquiry would be effective. In that regard there was much discussion yesterday with Mr. Mansfield, with whom you are familiar. We discussed the requirement as to whether such an investigation is an absolute or qualified right under the convention. As I asked Mr. Mansfield, is it true that one of the qualifications set out in the Amin case, with which Mr. Power will be familiar, is that it has to be an effective investigation in so far as is possible? Does Mr. Power have a view in that regard?
Mr. C. Power
In that regard, the word "effectiveness" would more refer to the terms of remit of the type of inquiry set up, and that is the particular analysis as established by the European Court of Human Rights. In other words, and it relates back to the questions which we posed in our submission to the committee, are there powers in addition to Barron and the sub-committee that a tribunal of inquiry or other such body as set up to investigate would have that would make it effective? It is in that regard that I would urge the committee to view any future inquiry. Can it have powers which the previous ones did not have, that may well bring in more evidence? It is a different matter if the sub-committee was to come to a conclusion that there is no such body or that the evidence, as such, or the ability to gather evidence could not serve any useful purpose. That then becomes a moot point, but my concern relates particularly to the effectiveness of the tribunal itself.
That is the point on which I am trying to focus in order that we can make this decision. If the requirement under the convention is to hold an effective and prompt investigation immediately after the event, is it possible from a remove of 30 years to open a new book and say that we will have an effective investigation to bring the perpetrators to justice and to get truth and justice? Is that a fair and reasonable point?
Mr. C. Power
It would be a reasonable conclusion if there was evidence on which the committee would state that no investigation that would be initiated at this stage would have a reasonable possibility of adducing evidence to reach conclusions on culpability and individuals who should be prosecuted for it, aside altogether from any question of it being too long to prosecute anybody and other such practical issues. That begs the question, because it is about the effectiveness, to some extent, of the investigative process.
With the greatest of respect, Deputy Power, you are asking me to draw conclusions from facts when I am not in a position to draw them. It would be for the sub-committee itself to draw conclusions as to whether there are facts out there and whether there are matters out there, which, having listened to all the invitees and the witness, you believe that a properly constituted investigative tribunal could discover and, therefore, lead on to results.
I would not ask Mr. Power to make a judgment such as that. I do not know if he was present for our earlier discussion on civil actions. I will leave that. The final matter I will put to him is the requirement under the convention to make payments of compensation where appropriate. I see from paragraph 16 of Mr. Power's submission that he has highlighted this in heavy type. Is there any particular reason for that?
Mr. C. Power
There is no particular reason for it being highlighted in heavy type, only to say that it is a feature that is quite often forgotten in investigative tribunals of this nature. To an extent, the tribunal that is envisaged by Articles 2 and 13, and the manner in which the cases have arisen, is in a context where there has been some allegation of State involvement in a terrible incident and that no proper investigation has occurred. In that regard, the court has said compensation must be open to be awarded. It does not state that it must be awarded, but it should be within the remit as such of the tribunal in that context.
Mr. Power mentioned Article 40.3 of the Constitution. That provision is qualified to the extent that the State has an obligation to vindicate life in so far as is practicable. It runs parallel with obligations under the convention, which uses the phrase "in so far as possible". In Mr. Power's view which obligation would take precedence?
Mr. C. Power
I would submit in a case like this they are almost coterminous. As a matter of law, if you are asking me which of these two documents takes precedence, it is the Constitution. Clearly, it is our basic law. We have signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights and, unless, for example, the Constitution says one thing and the convention says another then we must do both. In other words, if the Constitution was to say go this far and there is nothing in the Constitution to stop one going this far, but the convention says one must go that extra bit, then I submit we must go that extra bit.
Therefore, any public inquiry would have to be capable of ascertaining all the things set out in the convention - the perpetrators, the culprits and so on - in so far as practicable.
Mr. C. Power
I would submit that is probably the case. There is no specific case law in Ireland on Article 40.3 as regards this type of inquiry. I would submit that a similar analysis should be undertaken by the sub-committee with regard to Article 40.3 of the Constitution.
We will do that. I thank Mr. Power.
I too welcome the representatives of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties. I join with Deputy Power in stating that your submissions to us on each occasion have been full of clarity which has helped our cause here to date. I thank you particularly for that. Does the European Convention on Human Rights oblige the State to take responsibility in view of the fact that we are talking about an event that took place 30 years ago? Does the length of time in any way diminish the responsibility of the State?
Mr. C. Power
Arguably it increases the obligation of the State because if we examine it in terms of Articles 2 and 13 of the convention, it means that the families of the victims have gone all that time without effective redress under those two articles and in the absence of an effective independent tribunal. I would think it increases rather than decreases the obligations of the State. That is not to confuse the issue to some extent with the effectiveness of what any new tribunal might establish. If the sub-committee were to take the view that no useful purpose would be served because there is no evidence or there is no means of getting it, that is a different conclusion. As regards the obligations of the State under Articles 2 and 13, it is clear that an inquiry that is independent and open to the public should have been held up to now.
Mr. Power said in his submission that the inquiry must be independent and went on to state in his supplementary submission that the Cory inquiry is a type of blueprint or framework this committee might recommend. As part of that recommendation he said the tribunals should be empowered to engage investigators, perhaps retired police force members or other officers. Will it not be difficult to have an independent inquiry, as he suggests, only to find out subsequently that we would need the experience of people already involved in the force to extract further information? Will Mr. Power comment on that?
Mr. C. Power
First, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland has hired policemen, but not necessarily from Northern Ireland, to do the job and that adds to the independence of that office. Second, the chair of any new tribunal would not necessarily have to be Irish but neither would the person have to be British. An independent chair could be chosen. Other safeguards could be put in place to maximise independence in a context where even if certain police officers must be drawn from the Garda, independence can be preserved. It may be entirely appropriate that certain police officers are drawn from the Garda given their experience in the matter but if that were the case other safeguards would have to be put in place to ensure independence, and that could be done by having, in addition to the Garda, other police forces involved.
I thank Mr. Power.
I thank Mr. Power and Ms Ward for attending the sub-committee. Their contributions were very helpful and provided good insight. The questions were excellent, as were the responses, and I appreciate that. We will now hear from Commandant Trears. We welcome Commandant Trears, who is an explosives expert and was formerly an EOD officer in 1974. Before inviting you to make an opening statement I want to tell you that Oireachtas Members have parliamentary privilege but you do not have the same privilege. We cannot extend that privilege to you.
Commandant P. T. Trears
That is fine.
Before you begin, Commandant Trears, perhaps you would outline your professional competence, experience and expertise in the matters we will discuss here today.
Commandant Trears
I was an EOD officer in the Army at that particular time. I joined the Army in 1965. Regarding my qualifications, I have a Bachelor of Science degree in physics and chemistry. I am also an ordnance mechanical engineer. I am a member of the Institute of Engineers of Ireland. I am a chartered engineer. I am a member of the Institute of Explosives Engineers and a member of the Institute of International Explosives Engineers. I also hold an MBA degree from UCD. Those are my qualifications.
That is a very comprehensive list. Thank you.
Commandant Trears
One picks them up along the way.
You were at the site of the bombings in 1974. Can you describe the scene?
Commandant Trears
On the Friday. Unfortunately I was, yes. I got to Parnell Street perhaps 40 or 50 minutes after the first bomb went off. The scene was chaotic. Needless to say, traffic was stopped. On much of the journey from Clancy Barracks, we had to drive on the footpath, with a Garda escort to get us through the traffic. On arrival, my function at the scene was firstly to clear the area, to ensure there were no more explosives there which might injure anyone else. The gardaí were afraid there might be another couple of car bombs somewhere else that might go off in another half hour. I checked and found nothing. The ambulances continued to come and go, bringing the injured away.
I was then called up to South Leinster Street to check a car suspected of containing a bomb. I had to get into the car and see if there was a bomb there. At that time in Dublin, people were becoming afraid that any car with a Northern Ireland or British registration might contain a bomb. I had to do my usual job with the car, get into it, open it explosively and finally clear it. There was nothing in it.
I went on to check different cars around Dublin over the next few hours. I continued doing my job until the work was finished. I was out until very late that night, and out early again next morning, because there were more suspect cars and devices, but not milk churns or anything like that. There were many suspect situations which I had to attend.
What was the scene like at the bomb site?
Commandant Trears
There was chaos there. It is hard to describe. There were many people injured, and many people looking around. The sub-committee is probably aware that the scene could not be preserved, and was not.
By the time you arrived there, had the area been washed down or cleaned up?
Commandant Trears
No. The fire brigade was standing by, not to wash down the area but because some cars began to burn in the area.
Had the fire brigade taken any action before you arrived?
Commandant Trears
I really do not know.
The members who will ask questions are Deputies Paul McGrath and Joe Costello.
I welcome Commandant Trears and thank him for attending, and for the information he will give us. He tells us of visiting the bomb scenes in Dublin on that night. Was this the first bomb scene he ever attended, outside of his training?
Commandant Trears
I was at the bomb scene in Sackville Place in 1972. In the triangle from the Ambassador Cinema at Parnell Street down to Capel Street Bridge and back to Connolly Station, I dismantled about 15 or 16 bombs between 1972 to 1976, approximately.
Were these real bombs or suspect devices?
Commandant Trears
They were real bombs. There was one in Connolly Station and another in Busáras. I saw Doctor O'Donovan's report. He talks about 16 firebombs on one Saturday. I dismantled 12 of those. Then I did a lot of other suspected bombs. Every suspect device is as a bomb until you are finished with it.
You are very experienced. What were the real bombs you dismantled over the period made up of mainly?
Commandant Trears
Dr. O'Donovan is talking about the fire bombs on that Saturday. They were made up mainly of an electric detonator, a timer and a mixture of explosives which would set fire. Usually, weed-killer and sugar would do the job for you. There was a guy caught for those on that evening as he was going back from Connolly Station.
Excuse me gentlemen, I must take a drink of water because I have only come off the stand in the High Court. I have been on the stand since early morning in the High Court talking about 128 different explosions. You can imagine trying to recall everything.
We have nothing stronger to offer you than water to offer but you are very welcome to it.
Commandant Trears
We can have that afterwards.
Were most of the bombs you came across incendiary devices?
Commandant Trears
I think 11 or 12 were incendiary bombs which would have had detonators in them and which would kill you if you were standing nearby as well as setting the place on fire. A lot of people when they think of an incendiary, they say, "Well, it is only like a match, you crack a match and you set it off," but there is a detonator in there. If a detonator goes off on the desk in front of me, you can say goodbye to me. It would blow my face off.
They were home-made explosives mostly.
Commandant Trears
They would be home-made explosives, yes. They were planted by a guy who was caught that evening going back from Connolly Station. I spent a week in the Special Criminal Court subsequently giving evidence and he got 13 years in jail. Incidentally, he was a loyalist and his name was Frederick Parkinson. It is easy to remember that name with the disease.
I advise you not to name names.
Commandant Trears
I am sorry. I did not realise that.
We cannot say anything that might reflect in any way on the character of somebody who is not a Member of the House. Because of the Abbeylara judgment, we have certain restraints. It would be better to speak in general terms.
On the night of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, you inspected the sites of the bombs.
Commandant Trears
I did.
From your experience, would you be able to give us any indication of what type of explosive might have been used in those bombs?
Commandant Trears
I had my mind made up when I was part of a documentary - "The Forgotten Massacre" or something it was named——
"The Hidden Hand".
Commandant Trears
"The Hidden Hand". I had my mind made up. In my estimation it was another case of home-made explosives. When I say "home-made explosives", it was the very same as fertiliser and ANFO. You got a primer, a detonator, a timing device and they, probably, put in a safety device into it so that they would not blow themselves up. It was straightforward. I should not say "straightforward bombs" because I was quoted after a bomb I did in the toilet underneath the station at Amiens Street. When I came out, the reporters reported me in the newspapers as saying, "It was a straightforward timebomb." That was it because we were getting so many bits and pieces at the time.
You have made up your mind that it was made up of ANFO?
Commandant Trears
Absolutely, yes - no two ways about it.
There is nothing in your experience at that time or subsequently that would lead you to——
Commandant Trears
That changed my mind or anything like that, no.
Moving on to the other incident that happened, which is mentioned in the Barron report, your meeting with a corresponding officer from Northern Ireland——
Commandant Trears
The bomb disposal guy.
Yes. At the time it was a garda who talked to you - do not bother mentioning his name.
Commandant Trears
I will not mention his name. There is no need.
You knew him, I presume.
Commandant Trears
I did, yes, but actually there is a more important incident that comes in between.
Tell us about it, please.
Commandant Trears
A couple of weeks after the Dublin and Monaghan bombings there was a bomb in Clones, which was reported as a loyalist bomb. That was not a loyalist bomb. I know it. I dealt with that bomb in Clones. It was in two milk churns. It was about a 500 lb bomb.
There were two bombs in Clones.
Commandant Trears
I think this was about——
There was one in Fermanagh Street in Clones and there was one in another location which is——
Closer to the Border.
——closer to the Border.
Commandant Trears
No. Senator Billy Fox had been shot a couple nights before. He had been shot, as people know, by the IRA. The IRA then were very much out of favour with the people in Clones.
It was prior to the Dublin bombings that Billy Fox was shot.
Commandant Trears
Was it prior?
It was, yes. About six weeks before.
Commandant Trears
The IRA were very much out of favour with the people of Clones, and the people around, over shooting Billy Fox, so they decided to put two milk churns outside a public house in Fermanagh Street. It was O'Brien's public house. That was the name of the pub at the time.
At that time, I was staying in the Imperial Hotel in Dundalk. I was operating from there. I was called by the Garda at about 1 o'clock in the morning to go to Clones. Then I got out of bed, put on my gear and started getting ready. Then I got another call that I was not needed at all, so I took off my gear, went back into bed and tried to go asleep. Then I got another call that I was needed. Finally, I had my own crowd, down in the Army barracks, ready to move. They picked me up at the Imperial Hotel and I went to Clones.
I arrived in Clones and the area was fairly well cordoned off. At the same time, there was an escort party, a security party, which had come from Cootehill. The Army were billeted in Cootehill at the time. They came from Cootehill and secured a place for me but as I was going to approach these two milk churn bombs, the local reporter for the Irish Independent came up to me and said, “Captain, I would advise you not to go near these bombs. There is an anti-handling device in one of these bombs and if you go near them, you will be blown up for certain.” I had a good think at that stage. That would make you think. That would make your mind alert, when you would hear something like that.
There was a chief superintendent who was only there temporarily. He was relieving the chief superintendent in Monaghan who was getting married at the time. He got married late in life. There is another story about that but we will not go into it.
We will not hear that one today.
Commandant Trears
We will not go into it. I am sorry, Chairman.
No, we will not. We cannot. We have just heard from that particular superintendent. We should keep to the point.
Commandant Trears
It only reminded me of a bit of humour
I accept that but we have got to keep humour out of this and concentrate on the business.
Commandant Trears
I went to the chief superintendent and I told him what the Irish Independent reporter had told me. He said, “There is a bomb there and the bomb contains an anti-handling device and if you do it, you are going to be blown up.” He also told me that the Garda sergeant there at the time had been down at the two milk churns and had taken away some bits and pieces off it. I went over to the chief superintendent and I said, “Tell me, what did he take away?” That was the next thing I wanted to know. Had he dismantled the bomb for me, which I would have welcomed? He said, “I don’t know,” and he would not tell me anything because they - the Garda - should not have gone near the bomb.
You dismantled the bomb.
Commandant Trears
I went down to the barracks and I got the bits and pieces from the sergeant, under pressure. I was now left with the two milk churns that were connected to each other with cortex. That is an explosive lead. I will not go into describing it; I would only keep you here all night.
Okay.
Commandant Trears
They were connected to each other but I still did not know whether there was an anti-handling device in it. I was getting no co-operation from the Garda. The people in the area were shouting. They wanted to get back into their houses and I was under a lot of pressure and a lot of hassle. I did not get time to think. I looked for a volunteer who would drive the landrover because I wanted to go down there. I had a plan in my mind. I wanted to drive down another back street, come up around where the bombs were and load the two churns into the back of the landrover but I knew that if there was an anti-handling device, I was gone. There was no way about it. I looked for a volunteer and there was a lieutenant in the Army. Do I mention his name?
No.
Commandant Trears
There was a lieutenant in the Army who was in charge of the security party that night. He volunteered to do it with me. I told him the risk, I told my own bomb disposal team to get ready at the top of the street and I told the security party to get ready at the top of the street, that we would do a snap and grab job and that once we got the bombs loaded into our landrover we would drive straight out of the town. He briefed his own non-commissioned officer who was second in charge to him of the danger we were going into and I briefed my own. I said, "We may not come back." That was a fact. We got away with it, anyway. There was no anti-handling device in it. I partly guessed there was no anti-handling device in it because a clock mechanism and a few wires, et cetera, had been taken out of it.
You dismantled the bomb. Did it contain ANFO?
Commandant Trears
That was ANFO.
You are convinced it was a similar——
Commandant Trears
Yes. I explosively opened the churns in a quarry outside Clones. About an hour later I got out to a quarry and explosively opened the lids of the churns.
It was very similar to the ones that subsequently exploded in Dublin.
Commandant Trears
Absolutely. No change. The same make-up.
Some of your colleagues who were on the scene felt that the Dublin bomb——
Commandant Trears
It will only take a second to finish this part of it.
Okay.
Commandant Trears
I went back to Cootehill with them, had a bit of breakfast and went back into Dundalk. I got a ring - this brings in the Major in the North you were going to talk about - from RTE in Belfast to say that they had got a ring to say that if I dismantled any more bombs in the 32 counties of Ireland - they said 32 - that I would be assassinated. What is more, they said that if any ordnance officer dismantled any more bombs south of the Border, I would be assassinated. I would be blamed for it.
Was this reported to you directly by the BBC or by the Garda?
Commandant Trears
RTE in Belfast must actually have got the thing wrong; they did not ring Dundalk, they rang Drogheda Garda station.
The Garda came and told you that.
Commandant Trears
The Garda came and told me that.
Was it the garda who came to tell you that who talked about you meeting a counterpart from the North?
Commandant Trears
No.
It was a different garda.
Commandant Trears
It was a different garda altogether. It was a different man completely. I went back to Dublin. There had to be an investigation over that incident. I got back to Dublin that day and I was interviewed by the intelligence people in Dublin and they advised me then at that stage that I would have to carry a gun for the rest of my time in the Army. They issued me with a Walter pistol and that comes into the story of the guy, the Major, coming to my house.
They issued you with what?
Commandant Trears
With a Walter pistol. It is a pistol, a gun
A Walter pistol.
Commandant Trears
Not a water pistol. That was the name of it.
Let us move on rapidly, Commandant, please. Going back very briefly to the Dublin bombings, you would disagree wholeheartedly with your colleagues who thought there was commercial explosive in the bombs in Dublin?
Commandant Trears
I have read some of the reports and the one thing that is being missed is that, first of all, it was high explosive. High explosives can be anything once the velocity of detonation is above a certain level. They were high explosives.
Would there be some commercial mix through it?
Commandant Trears
You would have a mix put into it. You would have some commercial element put into it.
What proportion do you estimate?
Commandant Trears
: You would only put a few sticks into it. If I was making up a churn bomb now, if I was putting in a primer and if I was getting a factory made primer, a factory made primer would be only this diamater by about that size. You would need only five or six sticks of explosive - four, five or six sticks.
It was definitely ANFO with a small amount of commercial explosive. Would the crater in the ground lead you to believe the same thing?
Commandant Trears
On the crater in the ground - I did not measure the craters or anything like that - from the diamater, size and depth of the crater, you could establish straight away that there was a table there. You could establish that.
As ANFO.
Commandant Trears
No, first of all, you could establish that it was high explosive and, second, you could establish the weight of the explosives.
What did you estimate was the weight?
Commandant Trears
I think they are fairly correct in the weights they put down. Lieutenant Colonel Boyle actually did that and I would say he is right.
I want to move on fairly rapidly.
We are up to 20 minutes already, Deputy.
Sorry. I just want to come to the point of the meeting being set up by the garda with your counterpart in Northern Ireland. This was most unusual, was it not?
Commandant Trears
Absolutely.
Why did you agree to go through with it when it was such an unusual happening?
Commandant Trears
As I told you, when I went to work on the Border, I never stayed in the barracks in Dundalk. I always stayed in a hotel outside. I would find that I would get more information around the place on what was happening, etc. I preferred to stay in a hotel. I even prefer to stay in a hotel today than staying in bed and breakfast.
Can we just keep to the point?
I will hand over to my colleague, Deputy Costello
Thank you very much, Chairman
With no disrespect, would you just answer the question rather than going on——
Commandant Trears
Yes, I am trying to answer it in an easy way.
Be as succinct as you can.
Commandant Trears
All right.
Thank you.
Commandant, you are very welcome. I do not know whether the Chairman appreciates the humour but we do. He has asked us to move on.
Commandant Trears
As I say, after being in the High Court all morning, you need to relax a little.
This is far from light entertainment but we will proceed. I have a question following the contribution of my colleague, Deputy McGrath. There is a suggestion in the Barron report that there was an attempt to bribe you by the British army officer.
Commandant Trears
That is correct.
Did that army officer visit your home?
Commandant Trears
He did, yes.
He was taken by a garda, who will be nameless, to your home.
Commandant Trears
Yes, he had tea and sandwiches in my house actually. My wife made tea and sandwiches for him.
How high ranking an officer was he?
Commandant Trears
He was one rank higher than me at the time. He was a major in the British army. He was in charge of bomb disposal. He was my equivalent across the Border.
Will you clarify a little better the idea of bribing you? What did he offer? How did you interpret it?
Commandant Trears
How it came about is that I think it might have been in the Special Criminal Court that I met the garda in person and he said, "There is a guy from across that would like to meet you. Would you meet him?" When he said a guy wanted to meet me, I said, "Yes, no problem" or something like that. I never expected any situation to come out of it. The next thing was I got a phone call on a Saturday morning. At the time I was writing a thesis for my MBA. I happened to be at home that Saturday morning that August weekend and I got a phone call at the house to say that he was somewhere down the road in a pub. There were no mobile phones that time. He had this gentleman with him and he said, "Could I bring him to you?" I said, "Come along." He came up to the house. What is your question? I am losing the question. You are right, Chairman.
The question is how you interpreted the bribe.
Commandant Trears
I did not really expect him to be a bomb disposal guy. I was interested in chemicals at the time; I was in interested in the industry. I was preparing maybe to leave the army as well. I was preparing for going out. That is why I was doing the MBA and these things. I did not realise he was going to be an army fellow but, since he was an army fellow and since he was a bomb disposal officer, it was even better. I felt we had something in common anyway, so I talked away to him. We talked generally about the Northern situation, what a disaster it was, generally about explosives and bombs, dismantling bombs, how many bombs he had done and how many bombs I had done——
What about the bribe?
Commandant Trears
He then said, "The way my work is fixed, I do six months active duty on the ground dismantling bombs or going to suspect devices and I do six months intelligence work. In other words, I follow it up by going out and about and looking for information, collecting information, collating information, looking at results from different bombs and see what is in common." Then he said, "You must have a lot of information down here in the South because you seem to be involved in all the bombs, in Dublin, Clones, Monaghan and different places like that. Your name is cropping up everywhere."
Did he suggest expenses?
Commandant Trears
He said, "I would like to keep communications with your," or words to that effect. He also said, "You could do a lot of work for us."
Where did the suggestion of money come in?
Commandant Trears
I asked, "In what way?" He said, "You could give us a lot of information about bombs that you have done and bombs that you will be doing from herein. You seem to be a guy that is in the know with people. We are trying to trace the lines of where the explosives are going across the Border and where they are being manufactured." At the time the ANFO was being manufactured——
This would be the IRA
Commandant Trears
This was IRA stuff.
Did he suggest money?
Commandant Trears
First, he suggested that all out-of-pocket expenses and that kind of thing would be taken care of.
So, that was his suggestion.
What did he mean by "that kind of thing"?
Commandant Trears
He put it casually. Very casually, he said, "out-of-pocket expenses". Then he said, "You know, you'll make a few bob on it too".
That is a bit different from "that kind of thing".
Commandant Trears
It is. That is why I am trying to convey the casual way he said it.
Those were the words he used. "You'll make a few bob on it".
Commandant Trears
"You'll make a few bob as well."
We are getting deep into inquiries regarding individuals. I am reluctant to go into this, Commandant Trears.
Commandant Trears
I do not mind.
We mind.
My final question on this is relevant. On page 267, the report refers to an allegation made by Frank Doherty that "this same officer planned the Dublin Monaghan bombings and that he had control of the forensic samples taken by gardaí".
Commandant Trears
From the intelligence I got at that time - I am not going to name the gentleman - he was the person who armed the Monaghan bomb.
I missed what you said, Deputy Costello.
I am quoting from page 267 of the Barron report. It states:
In truth, the attention devoted to this meeting by journalists derives not so much from what happened at the meeting itself, but more from the allegations made by Frank Doherty that this same officer planned the Dublin/Monaghan bombings and had control of the forensic samples taken by the gardaí for several days before they reached the Department of Forensic science in Belfast.
It goes on to state:
As we have seen, the Inquiry has found no evidence to suggest that either of these allegations is true.
Has Commandant Trears anything to say on that?
We are not going to go into those allegations in any way where they could reflect on or impugn an individual who is not here. It is second-hand information.
We are not naming the person.
The person is easily identifiable.
Commandant Trears
Whatever you say, gentlemen. I am only here to help you.
We can proceed on a more general basis. The point has been made.
May I interject in support of Deputy Costello? I will not name anybody.
Any discussion will be done in private. The Chair has decided on this matter.
The final word from the Barron report is that the inquiry has found no evidence to suggest that either of these allegations is true. Do you agree or disagree with that, Commandant Trears?
I propose that we take a five minute break to go into private session. This issue is important.
The Chairman has said we may not investigate someone who is directly identifiable. I am not even asking Commandant Trears to do that for the time being. However, a serious and pertinent allegation is made by Frank Doherty and is included in the last paragraph of the Barron report. It is that the same British officer - a Major and an expert in explosives, is that correct?
Commandant Trears
Correct.
We are stopping here. We will go into private session now. Commandant Trears, you may remain here. We will return in 30 minutes.
Sitting suspended at 4.30 p.m. and resumed at 5 p.m.
While I appreciate that members have been putting questions to Commandant Trears regarding our terms of reference and, in this instance, specifically testing some of the conclusions arrived at by Justice Barron, I must reiterate again, as I have done at all stages, that it is no function of this sub-committee to reinvestigate the bombings or to attach any individual liability. It was, therefore, for that reason that we briefly suspended the hearings to consider this matter. We must avoid any suggestion or inference of personal culpability and all questions should be directed with that in mind.
I shall conclude with one final question to Commandant Trears. Before the brief adjournment, we were discussing page 267 of the Barron report - the very last paragraph. Do you agree with Mr. Justice Barron's conclusion in the last sentence? I will read it for you: "As we have seen, the inquiry has found no evidence to suggest that either of these allegations is true". Could you give me perhaps a yes or no answer?
Commandant Trears
One moment. I shall just read it again. I want to see whether or not I can answer your question. I do not want to be saying yes or no unless I am sure of it.
If I could clarify further what the question is——
Commandant Trears
Okay.
Do you have any concrete personal evidence? Do you agree with Barron's conclusion: "As we have seen, the inquiry has found no evidence to suggest that either of these allegations is true".
Commandant Trears
This is page 267.
That is page 267. Can I have a yes or no answer?
Commandant Trears
I am reading into the middle of something.
Do you have any personal concrete evidence yourself to contradict what the Barron report has said?
Commandant Trears
I do not have any personal account.
That is all I am asking you.
Commandant Trears
Personal.
Yes, personal evidence - you personally have strong concrete hard evidence - not hearsay evidence.
Commandant Trears
I have hearsay evidence but I have nothing concrete.
You have no concrete evidence. That is fine.
Thank you very much, Commandant.
Commandant Trears
If I could say, Chairman, there is one other part——
No.
Commandant Trears
It did not come out in this. As regards that meeting, I would like it put on record that the British Government was actually asked in the House of Commons, "Did that visit take place?" My name was brought out in the House of Commons. The Secretary for Defence in the House of Commons said, "Yes, the meeting did take place."
That is fine. Thank you.
Thank you very much. On the explosives side where your experience lies, you have a very impressive list of qualifications.
Commandant Trears
You pick them up as you go along.
You are fairly categorical that the type of explosive was ANFO——
Commandant Trears
Yes.
——that it is was fertiliser and so on.
Commandant Trears
Yes.
Your description is included in page 68 of the Barron report which states: "Commandant Patrick Trears told the inquiry, on 5 May 2000, that no timing devices, unexploded bomb portions or explosive residue were found at any of the Dublin sites".
Commandant Trears
Yes, that is correct.
Would ANFO not leave some residue?
Commandant Trears
This is the thing; in making the ANFO with ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, if you put the thing together in the right proportions, you will have a high explosive and everything should be expended. If you looked at the documentary on Channel Four "The Forgotten Massacre", that is one of the statements I made in it - that the bombs exploded and that the whole mission was 100% successful.
Are you suggesting then that there would have been a high degree of expertise in putting together the composition?
Commandant Trears
Absolutely. I reckoned that. I actually said that to Mr. Justice Barron and I said it on television - that there was. I figured that you could not have done it better. I could not have done it better myself. I would probably have done it less than that.
I do not know whether you have any experience but if you have, in your experience, would the UVF have had sufficient expertise?
Commandant Trears
Not at all. Certainly not.
Did they have it later, or did they ever have that sort of expertise?
Commandant Trears
I do not think they were up to the game at all. I think they would light a fuse and run away. That was also stated by Lieutenant Colonel George Styles, the bomb disposal officer in Northern Ireland. He was on that programme as well. He said that what the loyalists were up to at the time was only a "hit and run" kind of situation. They had no sophistication.
In all of Commandant Trears' experience of defusing and detonating bombs, and I presume the ones in 1972 and 1973 in Sackville Street——
Commandant Trears
They go back a bit further than that, when I started dismantling.
Did any of them compare with this in terms of quality?
Commandant Trears
No.There was nothing on that scale, even though I have a photograph of eight or 12 churn bombs that I did in Dundalk. I also have a photograph coming out of the courthouse in Dundalk after dismantling another bomb on a Saturday evening. If any of the members have not seen a bomb, I could pass around the photographs.
That is fine. The estimate has been given to us that it would require a ratio of ANFO to commercial explosive of 1:4.
Commandant Trears
Whoever gave you that estimate, I would not take him on as a chemist anyway. He would be a bad chemist.
What would Commandant Trears'estimate?
Commandant Trears
I would say that if it was to be made in Enfield by Irish Industrial Explosives it would produce a ratio of approximately 1.4:1.
Is it pure crystallised ammonium nitrate?
Commandant Trears
If one got a subversive group to do it, it would not be as sophisticated. Irish Industrial Explosives make ANFO.
We received a submission from Nigel Wylde.
Commandant Trears
The British army officer.
That is correct. He told the sub-committee that there were seizures of approximately 1,000 lb. of ANFO per week in his time, in 1974, in Northern Ireland.
Commandant Trears
Yes.
Presumably these seizures would have belonged to the IRA. The expertise that was available at the time, wherever the bomb came from, would not have been the equivalent of the expertise at the plant in Enfield. Given this, presumably none of the organisations had the capacity to provide it at a ratio of 1:1.5. Is it the commandant's opinion that ANFO was the explosive used at the time?
Commandant Trears
Absolutely.
What would be the commandant'sopinion of the ratio compared to pure gelignite or dynamite?
Ammonium nitrate played a part.
Commandant Trears
Ammonium nitrate, farm made.
Yes.
Commandant Trears
To that——
Commercial.
Commandant Trears
I would say, depending again on how good the guys were at making it, it could be brought up to a ratio of 1.5 or 1.6:1.
At that time.
Commandant Trears
Yes, I think the IRA was doing it.
What is the highest figure?
Commandant Trears
It is a matter of trying to get the ratio lower rather than higher.
I know, yes.
Commandant Trears
If one wants it high, one can get it up to one in 40, and it will not explode at all.
Okay.
Commandant Trears
The secret is to get the ammonium nitrate up to the right strength - up to, say, 96% - and get maybe 4% or 6% fuel oil. One is then in business, into 100%.
Would it be possible to transport that from Northern Ireland directly in cars and then detonate it in Dublin? Would it be stable or unstable? Second, would it be visible? Would it take up a lot of space?
Commandant Trears
No. Before attending the sub-committee I went through some old stuff. I had an example of about a tonne of the stuff. I will make it even simpler. Take a milk churn - if we go back far enough we will find that we all come from farming backgrounds.
So do the bombers.
Commandant Trears
A milk churn would hold about 250 lbs.
Which would be roughly the amount we are talking about.
Commandant Trears
Yes, 250 lbs. If you had two milk churns, you would be into 500 lbs.
Okay.
Commandant Trears
It would not take up too much space, no.
Would it be stable to allow for transport?
Commandant Trears
Yes, no problem.
Were you familiar with ANFO in 1974, both in its stable form and after it had been exploded?
Commandant Trears
I was, yes, because I actually exploded it. I got it before I exploded it and I saw what was left after it.
Thank you very much, Commandant Trears. I know you have had a wearying day with the High Court this morning and the sub-committee this afternoon. We are very grateful to you for coming, for facilitating us and for answering questions.
Commandant Trears
If I can be of any help to you from hereon in, I will be only too pleased.
If there is any other matter you feel the sub-committee should be aware of, we would be delighted to hear of it in writing. Thank you.
Commandant Trears
All right, I speak too much.
No.
Commandant Trears
Okay. Thank you.
The sub-committee adjourned at 5.10 p.m. until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 25 February 2004.