Legal action pursued over bomb investigations

SOME families of the victims of the Monaghan and Dublin bombings have begun legal action against the Irish state.

Letters have been sent to the Attorney General’s office, the Minister for Justice and the Garda Commissioner by the law firm acting on behalf of some of the victims’ families over what it claims was the “ineffective investigation” into the 1974 atrocities.

KRW Law wrote to authorities following the publication earlier this month of the Kenova Final Report, on the major independent investigation of the same name into crimes and misconduct during the Troubles.

Part of Operation Kenova is the Denton Report which specifically investigated the Glenanne gang, a loyalist group involved in numerous murders including the Miami Showband Massacre and their links to state security forces including RUC, UDR and British Army.

On Friday, May 17, 1974, three bombs planted by the UVF and coordinated to go off during rush hour exploded in Dublin while about 90 minutes later, a fourth exploded outside Greacen’s Bar on the junction of Church Square and North Road, in Monaghan Town. Seven of the 34 people who lost their lives on the deadliest day in all of the Northern Ireland Troubles were from Monaghan. Hundreds others were injured.

Nobody has ever been charged over the atrocities, but the Ulster Volunteer Force accepted responsibility for both bombings during a 1993 TV documentary. In the same programme, members of the loyalist group insisted it acted alone without assistance.

Three years after the documentary, relatives of the victims of the attacks set up a group called Justice for the Forgotten and called for a public inquiry. Following a number of legal battles, a judicial inquiry was set up which was eventually led by Mr Justice Henry Barron.

The Barron Inquiry, which, concluded in 2003 found that the bombings were carried out by two loyalist groups in Belfast and the Portadown-Lurgan area and that it was likely that individual members of the then Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the Ulster Defence Regiment may have had knowledge of events.

However, any claim of collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the RUC or other official bodies at the time has been rejected by those groups.

A commission of investigation set up in 2005, published its final report two years later in which it was critical of how garda records, notes and evidence, including a registration plate of the Monaghan bomb car with a fingerprint on it, had been lost and said inadequate information had been provided by British officials

Operation Denton found a “poor investigative response” in the original Garda investigation into the bombings carried out by the UVF.

Bereaved families were treated “without empathy or respect”, it also claimed.

The Irish Times has reported that in his legal submissions to Ireland’s Attorney General, Minister for Justice and Garda Commissioner, solicitor, Kevin Winters of KRW Law argues that “Irish authorities had breached human rights laws and called for an independent inquiry into the original Garda investigation and subsequent reviews.”