Families of car bomb victims seek truth

FAMILIES of the 33 victims of the car bomb outrages believe the men responsible were allowed to escape justice for wider political reasons.

Margaret Urwin of the Justice for the Forgotten group says the Fine Gael-led Government at the time of the 1974 atrocities was so “terrified” the British would withdraw from the North and leave the Republic to cope with the resulting chaos that it adopted a “softly-softly” approach to cross-border investigations.

“There was pressure on the garda from above to destroy information and wind down the investigation, that is obvious.

“This was the pattern in all the investigations in the early and mid-1970’s. It is not a coincidence.

“So many documents have gone missing, it has made things very hard for us, but we will keep searching for the truth,” she said.

Relatives said they had been left “breathless” by news of a bonfire carried out by garda officers in December 1974 which may have seen key pieces of information go up in flames.

They strongly question why the investigation into the May 17 twin attacks — the most amount of lives lost in a single day of the Troubles — was wound down after just three months.

No one has ever been prosecuted in connection with the horrific double bombing and the garda investigation into the crimes has been the subject of deep suspicion for 33 years.

However, the McEntee probe insisted it was unable to find evidence of collusion over the speed at which the original investigation was shut down.

This was partly due to the “unquantifiable” amount of lost documentation, it concluded.