A group representing people killed and injured in the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings has announced that it will take its case to the European Court of Human Rights.
The Justice for the Forgotten group says it has enough evidence to support claims of collusion in the bomb attacks on May 17th, 1974, which killed 33 people including a woman pregnant with twins.
"We have moved beyond suspicion and speculation and we are now in a position where we actually have evidence on the public record," Mr Greg O'Neill, solicitor for the Justice for the Forgotten group, said last Saturday, referring to information made public by the Barron Report, the Oireachtas committee hearings and the inquest hearings.
The group will be lodging two complaints to the European Court of Human Rights. The first is that there is a "prima-facie case that the United Kingdom, through its security forces, colluded in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings".
Secondly, the group says that the United Kingdom, by failing to co-operate with the Barron inquiry, the Oireachtas committee hearings and the inquests, has breached its obligations to co-operate with inquiries into loss of life, as set out under Article Two of the European Convention of Human Rights.
The group will be filing its claims over the next number of weeks, according to Mr O'Neill who said that the first procedure, an admissibility test, would take between six and 15 months to be decided upon. He expected the group to get over the "hurdle of admissibility", given the "compelling nature of the material that is now available".
The group commended the findings of the Oireachtas committee on the Barron Report, which earlier this year said there were significant issues within the State that needed investigation and called for the issue of British collusion to be investigated. These findings were "stark and very far-reaching", according to Mr O'Neill.
However, the group rejected the recommendations of the majority of that committee, which called for a commission of investigation to be established under new legislation. This form of inquiry is "totally unsuited" to the case of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, according to the Justice for the Forgotten group.
"There is no sign of it [the legislation] being implemented and even if it was implemented it would not provide a satisfactory basis for a human rights inquiry. The issues identified by the committee are issues that require it to be investigated publicly and that is a duty that must be discharged by this Government," Mr O'Neill said.
An effective investigation required the participation of the UK, according to the group, which has called for "nothing less than a public tribunal of inquiry into those grave matters".
In the event that the Government does succeed in securing a binding commitment from the British government to participate in a process of public inquiry, the group said they "may be in a position to review the necessity to continue with these complaints before the European Court of Human Rights".
The group indicated its members would accept an offer from the British embassy for a meeting to discuss the Oireachtas committee recommendations shortly.
Ms Bernie McNally, chairwoman of the group, discounted recent reports that the group believed that only an inquiry in the UK would be satisfactory. It would be "an abdication of this Government's responsibility to pass it over to another country," she said.