Families call for 'abject apology' from Garda

Relatives' reactions:The Garda should issue an "abject and craven apology" for its handling of files relating to the Dublin-Monaghan bombings investigation, the organisation representing the families of those involved has said.

Greg O'Neill, the legal representative for Justice for the Forgotten, said the MacEntee commission had not been able to carry out its duties properly because vital Garda files had gone missing.

Mr O'Neill said the commission had been hampered by what he called "an appalling and lamentable chronicle of failure and errors by our police force".

He described the chapters relating to the documentation missing from the Garda, the Defence Forces and Government departments as enough to "make any reasonable person want to cry".

"You are talking of a level of incompetence, a level of carelessness and a lack of concern which is frightening. It is a terrifying catalogue of systematic and practised failure by the gardaí. The commission was, to a large extent, unable to discharge its function because of the absence of documentation," he added.

Mr O'Neill pointed to a statement made by the Garda Commissioner to the commission in 2005, when he said there was "no further likelihood" of recovering 10 files relating to suspicious Border activity between 1971 and 1975.

Mr O'Neill said: "Whatever happened to the Garda investigation files, whatever happened to the primary documents, whatever happened to the records, they were culled. They disappeared and the commissioner of An Garda Síochána cannot give an explanation to the commission of investigation and he expresses no hope of ever being able to find the 10 highly-sensitive crime and security files that are still missing.

"This is seen in the investigation report to be a chronic and systematic practice throughout the gardaí in terms of dealing with serious crime throughout the 1970s and 1980s."

Mr O'Neill said there were officers involved in the initial investigation who were still involved in the Garda, and he believed there would be resignations if the same errors were uncovered in a police force in other EU countries.

Barrister Cormac Ó Dúlacháin, who has represented the families involved, said there was now a need for the Oireachtas to pursue the "heart of the matter" - who carried out the bombings and if there was collusion involved.

He said there was a "whelm of information" now available that there was collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the British security forces relating to the Dublin-Monaghan bombing, other bombings in this State and "innumerable killing and deaths" in Northern Ireland.

Bernadette McNally, who lost an eye in the Dublin bombings, said the families were disappointed that the question as to why the initial Garda investigation was wound up could not now be answered.

"The negligence relating to the documentation is an absolute disgrace, whether it be 1874 or 1974. It is complete negligence on the part of the people of Ireland," she said.

"The families have a real persistent and spirit of defiance to find out what happened. There are a lot of other things to be looked into, such as who planted the bombs and how did they get there. This Government shouldn't stop until we find it."