Debate contribution: The Troubles: Irish State Role

Debate contribution by Mr Doug Beattie MC on 11 March 2025.

MLA

Mr Doug Beattie MC

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

11 March 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

The Troubles: Irish State Role

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4855803

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Over the past month, we have watched and listened to victims, victims' families, police officers and people from the medical emergency services recount their stories of the harrowing and horrific bombing in Omagh on 15 August 1998. They have done so with clarity, courage, compassion, a sense of loss and a deep sadness. Those who have listened to the powerful commemorative hearings cannot be anything other than moved by their personal reflections. They have lost loved ones and lost life's rich opportunities. Many will live with the outcomes of that awful day for the rest of their days, physically and psychologically. No matter how many warm words we use now or in the future, we cannot give them back their murdered loved ones. We cannot erase the sights, the sounds and the smells of that day. We can try, however, to give them truth and justice, and we can strive to give them accountability. I hope that the public inquiry is the start of that process. Could the bomb have been stopped? Could lives have been saved? Were there failings in the intelligence collation? Was there human error? The inquiry will aim to find that out. What is absolutely clear is that terrorists placed a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device in Omagh town centre and 29 innocent people were killed and over 200 were injured. They were not in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were in the right place at the right time, and they were murdered for no reason and with no excuse. The vehicle that delivered the IED to Omagh on that fateful day was stolen in the Irish Republic. The explosives were sourced in the Irish Republic. The timer power unit (TPU) was made in the Irish Republic. The IED was assembled and placed on board the car in the Irish Republic. The plan was made and rehearsed in the Irish Republic. The vehicle-borne IED left the Irish Republic, crossed into Northern Ireland and detonated, killing 29 people, before the bombers escaped back into the Irish Republic. Yet, the Dublin Government do not feel the need to hold a public inquiry in parallel to the UK inquiry, or even a commission of investigation. They clearly do not take their commitment to victims seriously, and many victims do not trust their hollow words. They do not trust some weak memorandum of understanding on information-sharing. They have good reason not to trust them. The Dublin Government promised much to the Kingsmills families and delivered little, even though they said that they would bring in unprecedented legal measures to facilitate cooperation to deliver on their commitment. Compare that statement to the statement from the Irish Justice Minister just 10 days ago:

"If new legislation is required, it will be enacted by the Houses of the Oireachtas. The Taoiseach and the Tanaiste are fully committed to that co-operation with the inquiry".

Unless that legislation gives the Omagh Bombing inquiry the power to compel witnesses from the Irish Republic, including members of the gardaí and the Directorate of Military Intelligence, it is pointless. That simply is not going to happen, regardless of any memorandum of understanding. From our engagement with the Irish Government around the flawed Stormont House Agreement, we know that the gardaí and Irish military intelligence will redact information before an investigation, so why on earth do we think that an MOU will make any difference? Just look at the Dublin/Monaghan bombings: another despicable instance of bombing from our Troubles. That was on 17 May 1974, with 34 people killed and 300 injured. The last time that they did a commission of investigation into that, there were missing documents from an Garda Síochána, missing documents from the Defence Forces and missing documents from the Department of Justice. The reality is simple: the Irish Government criticise much but deliver little. Even when some were hell-bent on the Stormont House Agreement, the Irish Government never saw fit to have a parallel process. When the Conservative Government brought forward legacy legislation, even though it was disastrous and nobody is standing over it, the Irish Government brought forward nothing. They have not brought forward anything on legacy, and we are letting them away with that. We are not holding them to account while they hold our feet to the fire. I am not dismissing the sacrifice of the Defence Forces or the gardaí personnel who gave their lives fighting terrorism, but let us face the fact that the territory of the Irish Republic was used as a base to murder thousands of UK citizens.

I thank the Member for that question. It is a very real question. Here is the issue as I see it: imagine that the UK has its inquiry and comes out with a series of outcomes. Of course, those will be redacted for security reasons — that will always be the case. I would expect the Irish Government to do the same in a parallel process, come out with something that says, "Here's where we got it wrong". While we in the UK say that we could maybe have stopped it — I am surmising — maybe they could say, "Well, actually, if we'd done this, it might never have left our territory in the first place". If they are not willing to examine that, they have no way of knowing. There is no way of having a joint inquiry, because legislation would not allow that to happen. We all know that. The Irish Republic was used as a base to murder thousands of UK citizens, yet the Irish Government do not feel that it is right to set up their own legacy mechanisms. I do not get that. I do not know how anybody here can say that they should not set up legacy mechanisms. The reality, however, is that they have not and do not intend to. They intend to do what they have done to date, which is to have an MOU that says, "We will share information", albeit we have already seen that they do not share the information when it is required. I will finish with three things. The UK Government have failed miserably in dealing with the legacy of our past. They have failed to show a backbone in holding the Irish Government to account for their territory being used to murder so many of our citizens. The Irish Government have failed, at every level, to do anything for the victims or anything to address that state's role in the Troubles. I think that they have sanitised themselves away from this such that they think that the Irish state did not have a role in the Troubles. Well, it did, and the Irish Government need to take responsibility for and ownership of that. They need to stop just being critical of everybody else and start looking inwards to themselves. Lastly, it is a reminder. The Omagh bomb victims deserve answers. They deserve the truth, as do the thousands of victims right across these islands, and the Irish Government must step up to help provide that information.

1,193 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 12:15 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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