Full public inquiry into horror vital

The long and persistent campaign for justice by the relatives of the victims of the horrific Dublin and Monaghan bombings more than 30 years ago, was vindicated yesterday with the publication of the Barron Report.

Mr Justice Henry Barron concluded that there was collusion by some members of the RUC and the loyalist bombers, but he was also critical of the security forces on both sides of the Border, as well as the Fine Gael Government of the day.

The Barron finding of collusion necessarily must have repercussions beyond a public inquiry. He has essentially found that British forces bombed another friendly

European country and that fact has implications more profound than even the cause of the bereaved families.

Although the judge was unable to say whether there was active collusion involving the higher levels of the British Government of the time, the families of the dead, apart from demanding a full public inquiry, would be entitled to take Britain to the European Court of Human Rights.

A Dáil motion referring the report to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice was passed yesterday and Tánaiste Mary Harney indicated the findings would be debated in the Dáil in the new year.

It was one of the worst atrocities ever perpetrated on this island, with 33 innocent people, including a pregnant woman, slaughtered on that fateful day in 1974.

The silence that has surrounded it in the intervening years has at last been punctuated by the Barron Report, but the spectre of that awful day has yet to be entirely dissipated. While his investigation was the epitome of diligence, the matter cannot be allowed to rest at this juncture as if the deaths of those innocents had been expiated, because they have not.

The extraordinary facet of this horrendous episode in Irish history is that nobody was ever prosecuted and it has taken almost 30 years to establish the facts as uncovered by Mr Justice Barron.

His remit was to try to determine whether or not members of the British security services helped the UVF in committing the double atrocity in Dublin and Monaghan and he also examined the competence of the subsequent garda investigation.

What Mr Justice Barron achieved can only be regarded as a step nearer the truth, and because of the recalcitrance of the British authorities in divulging crucial information, finality cannot be realised yet.

This lacuna in the almost four-year long investigation was recognised by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern when he told the Dáil earlier this year that it would be over-optimistic to say that the judge had received all the information he wanted from the British authorities.

Representatives of Justice for the Forgotten, which speaks for the bereaved families, had a private meeting with the Taoiseach yesterday and afterwards called for a full public inquiry. Such an inquiry is their entitlement, and, undoubtedly, the Government will face strong calls for one from the Opposition.