I move:
That leave be granted to introduce a Bill entitled an Act to provide for a public inquiry into collusion between British State forces and other persons, between 1968 and 1998, to commit, assist, or prevent prosecution of, offences, including murder, in the island of Ireland.
We in Aontú are happy to be able to move this Bill in the Dáil. It is an important Bill for a number of reasons.
An incredible number of innocent people have lost their lives due to British violence, British murder and British collusion in Ireland, North and South, for well over 50 years. In many of these situations, there have been no investigations whatsoever. In many of these situations, there have been cover-ups of the murderers' actions, both North and South.
There is a generation who are coming towards the end of their lives who are desperately seeking justice and desperately seeking the truth of what happened to their loved ones. Indeed, in many cases, that search for truth and justice has become intergenerational with grandchildren taking up the work of trying to achieve justice for their loved ones.
It is an incredible situation that we have in some cases even those who perpetrated these murders finding that their career prospects improved and that their careers benefited. The danger is that we are at a crux. We are at a crossroads. We are in a really important stage right now in Ireland, North and South, because people know the British Government is seeking to bring through the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill. That legacy Bill, if enacted, would, in effect, allow people to get away with murder. The legacy Bill is a continuation of the policy that saw British state forces kill Irish citizens and British state forces collude in covering it up. In fact, that is what the legacy Bill looks to do today. It looks to cover-up those murders, in some cases up to 50 years later.
It is important that the Irish Government does not stand idly by regarding the Bill. The Government has been weak in standing up to the British on the Bill. I encourage the Government to state on the public record that it will bring the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights if the British Government proceeds with a Bill that is in direct contravention of European law in terms of people's human rights.
The Government should set the record straight, leaving the British in no confusion whatsoever that if they proceed down this shocking route of the legacy Bill, it will meet the full efforts of the Irish State, legally, diplomatically and politically, to prevent them from proceeding with this.
I have gone on the record as saying that if the British Government proceeds with the legacy Bill, I, as an Aontú TD, will have no option but to name people who were involved in the murder, for example, of the 14 civil rights marchers on Bloody Sunday.
The Taoiseach and the Government will be aware of the hundreds of murders attributed to the British state forces. I refer to murders and massacres such as: the Dublin and Monaghan bombings; Bloody Sunday; the Ballymurphy massacre; the Springhill massacre; the murders of the Miami Showband members; the murders of the O'Dowd and Reavey families; and the murder of Denis Mullen, the father of Aontú councillor, Denise Mullen. These are all shocking and heart-breaking murders that happened in our country over that time.
It is incredible that there has been no comprehensive investigation in all of this. We have situations, especially in the murder triangle where the Glenanne gang, which was a group of loyalist thugs worked hand-in-hand with the RUC and with British military in killing well over 120 Irish people in that small area, yet there has been no proper investigation of this.
The Aontú Bill, if passed, would allow for a commission of investigation to be set up in this State that would be allowed to compel witnesses in the South of Ireland. It would have the power to take evidence from people outside the State. It also would have the power to consider information collected from other published state investigations from outside of the southern State.
We are looking for a similar Bill to be passed in the North of Ireland, in Stormont, which would allow for the investigation to have compellability in both jurisdictions of Ireland.
I ask the Taoiseach to take this issue seriously. This is a train coming down the line currently that will impact significantly on hundreds of Irish families who have been significantly wronged by the British state. The Bill offers us an opportunity to provide some level of justice to those people.
