A Galway family has received a substantial boost to its 13-year campaign to reopen the investigation into the death of a 33-year-old lorry driver in London.
The family of Edward "Ebby" Walsh, of Mervue, yesterday welcomed the decision by Lord Williams of Mostyn, Under Secretary to Home Office Secretary Jack Straw, to meet them in London on Friday.
Walsh died as a result of being stabbed during a fight over a game of cards in a flat in Notting Hill just before Christmas in 1985. A Galwayman was tried for manslaughter and found not guilty in The Old Bailey. But since then members of Walsh's family, who fear the body buried in the family plot in a Galway cemetery is not his, have been seeking a full investigation into a series of what they claim are contradictions and mistakes in the way the investigation was handled.
These include doubts over the identification of the body, doubts as to the identification of a firm of solicitors on record in the subsequent court proceedings, and allegedly conflicting hospital records.
For the past 13 years the family has been pressing to have a thorough investigation carried out by the British government. Representations on their behalf have been made by politicians in successive Irish governments, including the former Tanaiste, Mr Dick Spring, and through the Irish Embassy in London.
Friday's meeting in the Home Office will be the first occasion to meet a senior British government figure. It will be attended by the Galway TD and Minister of State, Mr Frank Fahey, who has been pressing the family's case, as well as the Walsh family legal representatives from Galway and London and Mr Ray Walsh, a brother of Ebby.
The meeting follows a concerted new effort over the past few months involving the preparation of legal opinion by the Walsh family's barrister. Applications requesting "clarification of the serious circumstances surrounding the investigation, trial and inquest into the death of Ebby Walsh . . . " were made to the Metropolitan Police Investigation Pool, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Lord Chancellor's Office.