I welcome everybody to the resumed public hearings being held by the sub-committee in consideration of the report of the independent commission of inquiry - the Barron report. We are continuing with the second day of module 4 of the programme of work. Yesterday contributions were made by the Garda Commissioner, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces and the director of the National Archives. Today the sub-committee will be hearing contributions from the former chief State forensic scientist, Dr. Jim Donovan, who is very welcome, and from his successor, Dr. Sheila Willis, who is also very welcome. We will also be discussing the report with a number of currently serving and retired Army explosives experts and with Mr. Sean Murphy, author of a book on the National Archives.
Before we hear from Dr. Donovan, there is one other matter. We have sent invitations to a number of people outside the jurisdiction. I wish to outline the gist of the invitation sent to them and their reply in this matter. The first person is the Chief Constable, Hugh Orde, to whom we sent a letter on 14 January 2004 noting that "the sub-committee appreciates that not all invitees are in a position to comment on all of the matters of the report but is anxious to hear the views relevant to its terms of reference". We said the terms of reference were, first, whether the report of the independent commission of inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 addressed all of the issues covered in the terms of reference of the inquiry; second, the lessons to be drawn and any actions to be taken in the light of the report, its findings and conclusions; and, third, whether, having regard to the report's findings and following consultations with the inquiry, a further public inquiry into any aspect of the report would be required or fruitful.
In this regard, I invited the PSNI Chief Constable, Mr. Hugh Orde, to lodge a written or oral submission concerning the matter of co-operation by him and his office in the provision of all available documentation and information requested by Mr. Justice Henry Barron during the course of his investigation into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974. The final response we received from the Deputy Chief Constable, Paul Leighton, on behalf of Hugh Orde, dated 4 February 2004, states:
I refer to your letter dated 14 January 2004 addressed to the Chief Constable. The Chief Constable has seen your request to attend the hearing on Tuesday 10 February of the sub-committee on the Barron report. He has asked me to respectfully remind the sub-committee that all due assistance was provided to the Independent Commission of Inquiry by the Police Service of Northern Ireland. The Chief Constable has had sight of a memorandum attached to a letter of response from the Secretary of State. Other than associating himself with the memorandum, the Chief Constable feels that there is nothing he wishes to add by way of written submission or oral representation to the sub-committee.
We will come to that memorandum shortly. We also sent an invitation to Mr. R. A. Hall who was the forensic scientist in Northern Ireland at the time. He is now retired. We sent it through the Forensic Science Northern Ireland office. Again, we asked him to:
...confirm whether you wish to make a written submission, with a view to presenting to the members of the sub-committee during module 4 referred to in the proposed programme, [and whether he wanted to make] an oral submission based on any such written submission, and with particular reference to the relevant general policies that were in existence in 1974, the amount of cross-Border co-operation that was in existence at the pertinent time, any changes that have taken place since then, and the lessons to be drawn and action to be taken in light of the report.
On 21 January we received a reply from Forensic Science Northern Ireland, on behalf of Mr. Hall, which stated:
I refer to my letter of 31 December in which I undertook to relay to Mr Hall your invitation for him to make a submission to the sub-committee on the Barron report. I have spoken to Mr Hall but he has declined the sub-committee's invitation. Since there is no other knowledge of these matters within the laboratory it is unlikely that we can be of any further assistance to the sub-committee in its deliberations.
Invitations were sent to Mr. Paul Murphy, Mr. John Reid and Mr. Peter Mandelson, that is, the current Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and former Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland. Again we set out the terms of reference as follows:
The sub-committee on the Barron report has been formed by the Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights to report back to the joint committee concerning the matters: [I have already stated them]. As part of the sub-committee's consideration of the report, it has been decided to invite the various interested parties and bodies and some of those persons referred to in the report to make submissions relevant to ... [those] terms of reference and to participate in discussions on the report.
We also stated:
The sub-committee appreciates that not all invitees are in a position to comment on all of the matters of the report, but is anxious to hear views relevant to its terms of reference. In this regard, I have been asked to invite you to lodge a written or oral submission concerning the matter of co-operation by you and your office in the provision of all available documentation and information requested by Mr. Justice Henry Barron during the course of his investigation into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974. Some parties will be asked to appear before the sub-committee during the hearing days ... . In this regard, please indicate whether you are in a position to attend the hearing to be held on Tuesday 10 February 2004.
I will read out, for the record, Mr. Murphy's reply. It was addressed to Mr. Seán Ardagh, TD, Chairman of the Sub-Committee on the Barron Report, Leinster House, Dublin 2, Ireland. It reads:
Dear Mr. Chairman,
Your clerk, Mairéad McCabe, wrote to me last month inviting me to appear before your sub-committee on 10th February. I understand that a similar invitation has been issued to my predecessors, John Reid and Peter Mandelson. Please take this response as being on behalf of all three holders of this Office during the period in which the Barron inquiry was underway.
As you know, successive British Governments have condemned the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Like all the terrorist outrages that we have witnessed in these islands over the past 30 years, they were devastating in the personal tragedy that they caused. These two events were also doubly shocking, in the context of the history of the Troubles, given the scale of their destruction. The present British Government welcomed the establishment of the inquiry under chairmanship of Mr Justice Hamilton and then Mr Justice Barron and has sought to co-operate fully with it. This has required quite a considerable investment of resources, but it is a task that we have taken seriously and done our best to address diligently. Both my predecessors and I have taken a close personal interest in ensuing a thorough response to the judges' requests.
The relevant information that we have uncovered has been shared with the inquiry, including that from some very sensitive sources. I have personally ensured that the information has been provided in the fullest possible manner, consistent with my responsibilities to protect national security and the lives of individuals.
Additionally, none of us were in office at the time of the events and therefore able to recall the situation within Government at the time. I therefore do not believe that there is anything further of use that either I or John or Peter would be in a position to say in a hearing before your sub-committee.
I am therefore attaching a memorandum, setting out the steps we have taken to co-operate with the inquiry and the information that we have uncovered. I hope that this will help your sub-committee in its important work.
Yours sincerely,
Rt Hon Paul Murphy MP
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
The following is a memorandum from the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights', sub-committee dealing with the Barron report. It reads:
INTRODUCTION
1. This memorandum is presented by the Secretary for State for Northern Ireland to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights' sub-Committee on the Barron Report. It addresses the way in which the British Government has sought to co-operate with the Barron inquiry, making reference to evidence we have supplied.
2. The attitude of successive British Governments to the bombings in Dublin and Monaghan was reflected in the statement I issued following the publication of the Barron report last December. The murder of those 34 individuals was an act of obscene evil. The pain of that tragedy is still vivid, not just for those caught up on the day but also for the families and friends of those who were killed and injured.
3. The British Government, from the Prime Minister down, has been committed to helping the inquiry as fully as possible. My predecessor and I have personally ensured that the search of historic records has been thorough and that, consistent with our responsibilities to protect national security and the lives of individuals, all the potentially relevant information that has been uncovered has been shared with Mr Justice Barron, including intelligence information.
BACKGROUND.
4. In response to a request for information from Mr Justice Barron, the Government initiated a scrutiny of files to see whether they contained any information relevant to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
5. There appears to have been some confusion about the number of potentially relevant files held by Departments, with a figure of 68,000 being quoted. This figure refers to the total number of files ever recorded on the Northern Ireland Office's computer database, dating back over the lifetime of the Department (some 30 years). In other, larger UK Government departments, the file totals would run into millions. The vast majority of these would have no relevance to the events into which the Barron inquiry was looking (though this was, in many cases, only apparent once the file had been examined), and there are no contemporaneous files dealing specifically with the Dublin or Monaghan bombings.
6. The task of scrutinising files to see whether any of the information contained in them might be relevant to the inquiry was, therefore, a time-consuming one. The searches yielded a limited amount of potentially relevant information. Wherever possible, copies of the original documents were provided to the inquiry.
7. There have been criticisms in some quarters that the British Government has not provided intelligence material to the Barron inquiry. It is the case that original documents relating to intelligence material have not been passed on. That is because the nature of these documents or some of the peripheral information in them (not relevant to the inquiry) could, if released, compromise intelligence assets or the lives of sources. However, consistent with my responsibilities to protect national security and the lives of individuals, all relevant intelligence information has been shared with the inquiry, including information drawn from sensitive sources.
8. In addition to the trawl of files, the British Government has also carried out further specific work following up on specific lines of enquiry on which Mr Justice Barron sought further information. These lines of enquiry have been pursued as fully as possible, though regrettably they have sometimes come to a dead end and it has not been possible to take them further.
EVIDENCE.
9. Only a small amount of information was found that was potentially relevant to Mr Justice Barron's inquiries. It is set out below in relation to the various allegations concerning the British security forces that have been made over the years and that were considered in the Barron report.
10. With all of these issues, it is unfortunately impossible to prove the negative - there is no evidence to suggest that there was a policy of collusion, but I recognise that, for those who suspect it, the absence of such evidence does little to dispel the myth. However, I give the Committee my personal assurance that, had any evidence that pointed to collusion been uncovered during our search of the files, it would have been passed to the inquiry.
The next section of the document addresses the question:British security forces knew about the attacks in advance but withheld information?
11. During the period leading up to the attacks, there was a small number of reports indicating a general wish on the part of loyalists paramilitaries to mount attacks in the Republic of Ireland. It is presumed that these were mentioned in the course of contacts by the British security forces with their Irish counter-parts, and in some cases there is evidence to show that this was so.
12. The majority of the information is general in nature, rather than specific. There was some intelligence information relating to possible loyalist activity in the Republic of Ireland in the period before the attacks in Dublin and Monaghan, though there was nothing to suggest that the information related to those attacks. On one occasion, where the intelligence indicated specific plans, the security forces in Northern Ireland successfully disrupted the loyalists' plans, with several successful arrests and prosecutions following. British records indicated that the Irish authorities were made aware of this at the time. Although none of this information related specifically to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, it reflects the degree of information sharing between the British authorities and their Irish counterparts. We therefore felt it helpful, contextually, to share this information with the Barron inquiry.
13. We have uncovered no evidence to suggest that information of relevance about loyalist planning for attacks in the Republic of Ireland - even of a general nature - was, or would have been, deliberately withheld by the Northern Ireland security forces from their Irish counterparts. The Barron inquiry accepted that there was no evidence to suggest that the British security forces knew about the Dublin or Monaghan bombings in advance.
The following section addresses the questions:RUC/UDR/British Army involvement in the bombings? Authorised from the top of the security hierarchy?
14. There have been persistent allegations over the years that members of the security forces in Northern Ireland colluded with the perpetrators of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Mr Justice Barron concludes that while, in the circumstances, this is not a fanciful allegation, he has not seen any evidence to corroborate it and that it could not be inferred, even as a matter of probability.
15. It is a matter of record that some members of the RUC and UDR were convicted of collusion with loyalist paramilitaries in the 1970s. The fact that they were successfully prosecuted and convicted indicates that the authorities in Northern Ireland took such matters seriously. But, while it is impossible to prove the negative, nothing has emerged from British records to corroborate suspicions of collusion by any members of the RUC, UDR or other UK security agencies in the Dublin or Monaghan attacks.
16. At Mr Justice Barron's request, my officials have followed up a number of possible leads to obtain information on individuals alleged to have been seen in the vicinity of the bombs on the day in question. I am satisfied that these enquiries have been pursued to the fullest possible extent and regret that the leads they were following were not more detailed and therefore capable of leading to fuller results.
17. Similarly, there is no evidence to indicate that senior members of the security forces were aware of, and condoned, the activities of those individual RUC and UDR members who were involved in collusion with the loyalist paramilitaries. We were unable to identify any material that would confirm this. Had we uncovered such evidence we would have shared it with the inquiry.
Then there is his comment that theNorthern Ireland security forces deliberately obstructed the Garda investigation.
18. There have been allegations that the Northern Ireland security forces deliberately obstructed the Garda investigation, including in order to protect informant relationships within loyalist organisations.
19. Despite a detailed search, we have been unable to uncover anything that would indicate or refute this allegation. Had we uncovered any information to indicate a policy of obstruction or even heel-dragging on the part of the UK authorities we would have shared this with the inquiry.
Under the heading,Information withheld from the Secreatry of State by the security forces, paragraph 20 reads:
Finally, the Barron inquiry concluded that the Secretary of State of the day was not fully informed on matters of which he should have been aware and extrapolates from this that I may be similarly left in the dark. In response, I can only say that I am satisfied that I am fully briefed by my officials and that no relevant information has been witheld.
That is the conclusion of the memorandum.