Brendan Smith condemns proposed amnesty for murderers

I am glad of the opportunity to contribute to these important statements and such important issues. I just want to say that over the past 12 months or 18 months I have asked the Taoiseach on a number of occasions in this House if the Government would ensure that in every communication both verbal and written with the British Government that they reiterate the total opposition of the people of this country to the proposed amnesty. An amnesty for murderers, be the state forces or people from paramilitary organisations, totally unacceptable and I am very glad that the Taoiseach and Minister Coveney reiterated that very, very clearly in their contributions here earlier today. And I was very glad that in Derry on Sunday the Taoiseach took the opportunity as well to state outright opposition by the Government here and I think by the Oireachtas as well, by the people of this island to any such proposal. No way is the idea of an amnesty for murderers acceptable. Under no circumstances should it be acceptable in any democratic country. Introducing such a proposal means the British Government want to put an end to all investigations. Imagine a Government proposing to close down existing investigations and give up on whatever chance there is of getting the truth. I have dealt over the years with many families who fortunately lost loved ones, close family members and nobody has ever been brought to justice for those heinous crimes inflicted on innocent people. And I have to say all those individuals and families and groups that I have engaged with over the years, they act with such grace and dignity in their campaigning to get the truth. They are not out for revenge, they are seeking the truth. That is the message that comes across to all of us who engage with such families and such individuals. Imagine a Government putting forward a proposal to close down all investigations when you have families and individuals who have campaigned for decades to try to get the truth about what happened to their loved ones on those fatal and tragic occasions. It is absolutely appalling. We would be jumping up and down if it was some state in Latin America or somewhere was making such a proposal. And I am very glad, and Minister Coveney and all your communications at the department level and ministerial level, along with the Taoiseach, and the Taoiseach told us clearly in this House on numerous occasions that he has conveyed that very, very clearly to Mr Johnston as well. I was struck reading the Derry Journal at the weekend by an article by Colm Eastwood, MP for Derry, where he was writing an article coinciding with the 50th anniversary of that awful and tragic day in Derry. The world knows what happened on the streets of Derry on January 30th, 1972. Faced with peaceful civil rights demonstrators, standing against institutional discrimination which had denied them, their parents and their children, the same opportunities in housing, voting and jobs that others had, the British Army responded by indiscriminately murdering 14 unarmed men and children. Fourteen people, six of them children, went out without so much as a stone in their hands to demonstrate their strong and peaceful opposition to the oppression visited upon our communities by a state steeped in sectarianism and they didn't come home. And now with clear plans to prevent the investigation and prosecution of historic offences, this British government is launching a full-scale assault on victims and survivors across our society. Unquote MP Colm Eastwood. I always recall the comment of John Hume after those awful morders on that day 50 years ago, when he said, and he described the soldiers as uniformed morders, a man who campaigned for decades, champion of peace on our land, he aptly said it all with that particular phrase. Minister Coveney, you will recall many exchanges we have had over the years here in relation to the Dublin Monaghan bombings, where we, and I know you, your department, yourself and successive ministers of all political parties, have raised consistently with the British government the need to ensure a full and comprehensive investigation into those awful bombings on that day in 1974. There were unanimous requests in this House in 2008, 2011 and 2016, I recall, that called on the British government to ensure that an independent legal person would be given access to all files and papers pertaining to those bombings. Sadly, the British government have not responded to the request of a sovereign parliament, the sovereign parliament of a neighbour. And quite rightly, those motions called on the British government to allow access by an independent international judicial figure to all original documents relating to the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, as well as the Dublin bombings of 1972 and 1973, the bombings of Kay's Tavern in Dundalk and the murder of Seamus Ludlow. Look, sadly, Seamus' brother passed away, Kevin, passed away in my own county a few months ago, and he said to me at one stage, I'll go to my grave, Brendan, and I won't have got the truth about the murder of my brother. Here in December, just before we, the doll rose for Christmas, I raised again the terrible bombing of the 28th of December 1972 in my own home area in Bell Torval County, Cavan, where two teenagers were killed, Gerardine O'Reilly and Patrick Stanley. There is clear evidence now that that bomb was brought across the border from Fermanagh, planted in Bell Torval, two young people killed, innocent teenagers and many others injured on that night. We have never had, in Northern Ireland or in Britain, the proper, full and comprehensive investigation into those murders on that night. I went to Bell Torval, as I do on an annual basis, and said a prayer at the memorial, the monument, to Gerardine and Patrick. And I said to myself, last December, that was the 49th anniversary of those murders. And here we are, a half century on, and nobody has been brought to justice. Never mind, has nobody been brought to justice, but nobody has got the truth. I said to Antisha privately a week ago or so, I think that the anger, the worry, the concern of families is not abating, it is getting more intense, that grief. Because so many people, we are all getting older, the years are going by, and sadly, so many families fear that they will go to the returning world without ever getting the truth. These are issues, Minister, that the government must attach, continue to attach, the utmost importance to. Those families, those families of those victims, and the victims who are gone, we need to continue to do everything to support them. Thank you, Laskin-Korla.