Omagh victims push for cross-border inquiry

Omagh bomb victims will demand a timetable today for setting up a cross-border probe into the atrocity during new talks with the Government.

Relatives of some of the 29 people killed in the Real IRA massacre are meeting the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern in Dundalk.

Even though south Armagh electrician Sean Hoey has been charged with the August 1998 murders, campaigners want an inquiry into how police on both sides of the border handled the investigation.

The Omagh victims group have already met the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland, Archbishop Sean Brady, to back their plea.

And opposition party leaders have criticisedthe Government for failing to publish in full a report it commissioned into Garda intelligence handling at the time of the attack.

Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was among those killed in the blast, insisted the authorities should back their campaign in the same way they lobbied for a new tribunal into the 1972 Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry.

He claimed: “They are applying double standards by not affording the people of Omagh the same justice and fair treatment.

“If they want to use the delaying tactics of the Hoey trial and our civil action (against five men suspected of plotting the bombing), surely that does not stop us making preparations.

“I’m taking it as a foregone conclusion that you cannot deny the people of Omagh a full inquiry. So we need to make a start and put a timetable in place for preparing for a full cross-border inquiry.

“They should give us a senior civil servant from each of the Foreign Affairs Department and the Justice Department to work on this.”