thepost.ie: The Sunday Business Post online, 26 November 2006

 

Report Unearths Loyalist And British Collusion On Bombings

By Colm Heatley

Britain colluded with loyalist gangs responsible for three bombings in the Republic in the 1970s, including a bomb at Dublin Airport that killed one man, an Oireachtas report has found.

Britain colluded with loyalist gangs responsible for three bombings in the Republic in the 1970s, including a bomb at Dublin Airport that killed one man, an Oireachtas report has found.

The joint Oireachtas committee report into the bombings at the airport and Kay's Tavern in Dundalk, Co Louth, in 1975 and a bombing in Castleblayney in Monaghan in 1976 will be published on Wednesday.

Five people were killed in the three attacks.

The report was commissioned to examine the findings of the Barron Inquiry into the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings and make recommendations on the findings.

Sources involved in the report say that it points to a high level of collusion between the British government and loyalists.

Among the information presented to the committee was a Department of Foreign Affairs document that said the Irish government contacted the Irish ambassador in London in 1975 over its concerns of British collusion with attacks in the Republic.

The document states that the Dublin authorities wanted the issue to be discussed at a senior political level, not a police level.

However, no progress was made and contact between the Irish and British governments on the matter ceased in August 1975. One source close to the committee said he was disturbed by the level of collusion.

''British intelligence was directing RUC and UDR members who were involved in the murder of innocent people south of the border," the source said.

''What becomes obvious is that when the Northern Ireland Office [NIO] takes the primary role in the investigations, the flow of information stops. We have also heard evidence that, when RUC members did cooperate with families, they were told not to, and were stopped by more senior RUC people."

Margaret Urwin, of victims' group Justice For the Forgotten, said the government should hold a public inquiry.

''I think the overwhelming amount of evidence should force the government into holding a public inquiry as a matter of urgency," she said.

''Successive investigations have found strong evidence of collusion, yet there is still no sign of a public inquiry