I want my dad’s murder reviewed
For some considerable time now I have been trying to get the Government here to establish a public inquiry into the murder of my father who was killed on duty in 1970.
I believe that the Irish government of the day colluded with members of the gang who killed my father in order to ensure that those responsible never came to justice.
In a recent letter to me, the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, admitted that the “senior civil servant” at the time of my father’s death suspected that the gun that killed my father came from government sources.
Despite this damning public admission, acknowledging for the first time that my suspicions concerning my father’s murder have some credence, the minister still does not see fit to establish a public Inquiry into my father’s death and its aftermath.
Instead, some two and a half years after I first wrote to the minister, after engaging a solicitor and with much lobbying of personal contacts, he finally decided to respond to my correspondence.
The minister’s admission raises huge questions over the behaviour of some gardaí at the time and what steps may have been taken to protect the killers.
In his letter he also invited me and my representative to attend a meeting with him, the Garda commissioner and other senior gardaí in order to discuss my father’s case. I will accept the minister’s extraordinary invitation, though why he sees fit to assemble such a star chamber of members of the police force is beyond me.
Indeed the appropriateness of such a gathering in this context is quite perplexing, to say the least.
At this stage, and given his acknowledgement that the senior official of the day suspected government involvement in at least one element my father’s murder, it is my belief that the only proper course of action is to establish a public inquiry into the matter.
Indeed, I would go as far as to suggest that the whole period around the start of the troubles is deserving of a public inquiry from the perspective of the South.
We have collusion alleged between the British and Irish governments in the Dublin/ Monaghan bombings. I believe that elements within the state apparatus knew who killed my father and kept them out of jail.
There is the case of Dónal de Róiste whose life has had a shadow cast over it since his unexplained and, in my opinion, unfair expulsion from the army in 1969.
From my perspective, and though I agree with much of what is said, it is strange to see how our Government talks about and behaves towards Sinn Féin while the families of those murdered in the Dublin/Monaghan bombings, the family of Garda Richard Fallon and Dónal de Róiste have yet to see justice being seen to be done in the Irish Republic.
Finian Fallon
26 Northumberland Road
Dublin 4.
