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Category: Archive

Irish Echo editorial: making it public

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The first is the nature of the state’s response to what was the worst mass murder in Irish history. The second is the role that the British security forces may have played in the attacks, which claimed the lives of 33 people, including French and Italian citizens.
The taoiseach was pressed on both issues and had no satisfactory answers to either. He had no explanation for the fact that important files relating to the bombings have vanished seemingly without trace, and he admitted that the British, while helpful, were not helpful enough for Barron to dispel or confirm allegations about collusion. Nor was he at all reassuring on the demand, which has been made consistently over the last decade by the relatives of those who were murdered, for a public enquiry. It seems that the Barron Report, with all its limitations, is the best that the Irish people can expect.
That would be a great disservice to the state.
Critics have said that a public enquiry would be no more successful at accessing the British intelligence documents that were denied to Barron. That may well be the case, though Ahern has said that he is confident that the British prime minister and peace process partner, Tony Blair, would give whatever assistance was requested. But a public enquiry could also examine the equally important question of how it was the state made such a mess of the investigation. Perhaps the two issues are in fact linked. Was it sheer incompetence that has led the investigators to lose files, bungle the forensics, and keep some of the most important players in the investigation in the dark as to what the others were doing? It is not enough for a chief justice to report these as facts and for a taoiseach to acknowledge them in the Dail. They must have a consequence.
A public enquiry would allow those who were involved in the investigation to explain their role and the actions that they took or give reasons why they — more often than not — did not take action. It would allow others to question them and, most important, it would provide the Irish people with the opportunity to make up their own mind as to whether the greatest crime ever committed against them remains unsolved because of either incompetence or a more sinister reason — or perhaps, a combination of both.

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