Seán Crowe

Overall sentiment: -0.03
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I express my sympathy and solidarity with all the families who lost loved ones and those who campaign to this day for truth and justice. My time is brief so it would be impossible to touch on all periods of the conflict in the North that cry out for answers. The British Government would have us believe that it was a neutral peacekeeping force in the North of Ireland, but we know the British Government's security services were involved in hundreds of targeted assassinations and murders of Irish citizens in a dirty war conducted by agents like Stakeknife. Kenova was hindered at every turn by MI5 and the security apparatus of the British state, but it could not hide the truth that collusion was very real and went to the highest levels of the British state. Like Operation Denton, it exposes the criminality, collusion and cover-up that was the pattern of the British war in Ireland. Iain Livingstone is on public record as saying, "I can say categorically there was collusion. We know that to be true". The families of those killed in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the Miami Showband massacre in 1975 and other atrocities deserve the truth. The Irish Government must insist that all material evidence and other relevant information provided to and examined by Kenova, and other such operations, are now made available to the Irish authorities without further delay. I worked for years with Justice for the Forgotten, an organisation representing the families and survivors of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. We still do not have all the answers about what happened on 17 May 1974, when a car bomb went off in Monaghan and three others went off in Dublin city centre, one only a couple of hundred yards from where I now stand. The publication of the Kenova report does not draw a line under this period of our history. It only shows the need for greater transparency and accountability. The absence of a truth commission at the heart of the peace process is the greatest obstacle to getting answers for those families. Republicans have never opposed this. Perhaps it is not too late for the British and Irish Governments to come together to form such a process. Who is blocking truth emerging? That is the big question we ask today. Who is blocking truth emerging? It is not republicans and the Irish Government says it is not it, so who is blocking truth about the conflict that happened in Ireland? We need a truth commission now. We called for it 20 years ago. Thirty years ago, people were talking about a truth commission emerging post conflict. That has not happened. It needs to happen if we are to move on.

Sentiment score: -0.03