The Disappeared - Adams can help bring closure

Anyone watching Monday night’s RTÉ 1 documentary on the Disappeared could not fail to be moved by the testimony of the families of those abducted and murdered by the IRA during the 1970s.

For some, while their loved ones are dead, the dreaded memory of that time remains very much alive.

An old pair of blue and white striped trainers were the first sign that the family of 22-year-old Brian McKinney found of him. He disappeared from Andersonstown in Belfast in May 1978 — abducted, bound, dragged to his freshly dug grave and executed with a bullet to the back of his head for his part in the robbery of £70 from an IRA-run social club. It made no difference that, days earlier, Brian’s mother, Margaret, had repaid the money. It took another 21 years before the IRA admitted to his murder and revealed the location of his grave in Co Monaghan.