Relatives say hearing is delaying justice

The Oireachtas sub-committee hearing into the findings of the Barron Report was yesterday dismissed as another delaying exercise that would achieve absolutely nothing for justice.

A number of families of those killed and injured in the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings yesterday informed the committee they would not be participating in the hearings.

In a statement read out at the opening day of the hearing, lawyers for the O’Neill and the O’Brien families, and for Bernie Bergin, described the hearing’s remit and scheme as, at worst, insulting and suspicious, or at best, naive and foolish. They referred to the precedent of the Abbeylara judgment which, in effect, constrained the committee from making findings adverse to the reputations of persons who are not members of the Oireachtas.

The families claim the hearings, like the Barron Report, had only served to delay their search for meaningful justice.

They called on the hearings to be halted immediately and for a public tribunal of inquiry to be set up.

“If you continue with these hearings on the back of [the [Barron Inquiry] you will consign yourselves in history as part of a shameful and illogical process that has achieved a lot to be forgotten and absolutely nothing for justice,” they contended.

The efficacy and purpose of the six-week long hearing by the Justice Committee has also been questioned by the Justice for the Forgotten group who, in a letter to its chairman Sean Ardagh, have challenged its remit and scheme.

However, the group has agreed to participate in the hearings. Yesterday 26 people who were injured in the blasts, or were relatives of those who were killed, gave personal testimony about the events of the day and the degree to which it had affected their lives.

The simple format gave rise to an extraordinarily emotional and moving day of evidence, with many searing accounts of the catastrophic effect that the bombs - which killed 33 people and injured many dozens more - had on the lives of ordinary individuals.

It presented, as the group’s senior counsel Cormac Ó Dúlacháin put it at the end of the hearing, an opportunity for “putting a human face on the report”.

More pointedly, all those who gave evidence yesterday, without exception, called for the setting up of an independent public inquiry.

Mr Ardagh last night said part of the committee’s remit was to consider if a public inquiry would be required to be held.

However, he would not say whether he believed such an inquiry was necessary. “I am not going to preempt what the committee is going to decide. It would be totally unwise to make a decision.”

The committee will discuss Judge Henry Barron’s report in five modules before reporting its own conclusions to the Dáil on March 10.

Among the findings that will be closely scrutinised are the adequacy of the garda investigation, the inference of indifference by the then coalition government, and the lack of co-operation by the British authorities to Judge Barron’s inquiry.

Mr Ardagh said last night that members of Liam Cosgrave’s Fine Gael-Labour coalition had made submissions to the committee and a number of them had accepted invitations to appear at the hearings. He would not divulge their names.