The family of Mr Dean Lyons, who was wrongly charged with murder, have appealed to the Minister for Justice to extend the Co Donegal tribunal of inquiry into the Garda to their case.
Mr Lyons was charged with the murders of two middle-aged women at Grangegorman Psychiatric Hospital in 1997. He spent nine months in prison following the murders of Ms Sylvia Shields (59) and Ms Mary Callinan (61) on March 6th, 1997, on the basis of a statement taken down at the Bridewell Garda station.
However, two months after his arrest, another man, Mark Nash, admitted the Grangegorman murders to other gardaí after murdering a young couple, Carl and Catherine Doyle, in Roscommon. Nash is serving a sentence of life imprisonment for the Doyle murders.
Yesterday Mr Lyons's mother, Mrs Sheila Lyons, called for her son's case to be the subject of a public inquiry. She and her husband, Jackie, had spent more than three years trying to find out how their son had been charged with a murder he could not have committed.
A lawyer acting on behalf of the family has also spent almost a year trying to find out what happened in the case but without any results.
Mrs Lyons said the response she had had to her inquiries was from the Director of Public Prosecutions more than a year ago. The DPP informed her that a decision had been taken not to charge Mark Nash with the Grangegorman murders despite his admission of guilt. The DPP would not give a reason for his decision.
Yesterday Mrs Lyons said: "The won't tell us what happened because they can't. This has been eating us like a cancer. No one will give us a reason why our Dean was charged with something he could never have done. We got a solicitor a year ago but they have sent him nothing. They are afraid to let the truth out about Dean."
The Lyons's quest for information about how Dean came to be charged with the double murder has been backed by the family of Carl and Catherine Doyle. They were left to care for the couple's four orphaned children as well as looking after Catherine's sister, Sarah Jane, who was severely injured when she was attacked by Nash.
Dean Lyons died from a heroin overdose after leaving Dublin and moving to Manchester in September 2000. His family said he moved to England because he was living in fear of the Garda.
He had been living rough in the Grangegorman area at the time of the murders of Ms Shields and Ms Callinan. He was arrested on July 25th, 1997, and taken to the Bridewell Garda Station. After hours of questioning detectives produced a number of statements, and on the basis of these, the DPP charged Mr Lyons with the murders. He was remanded to Mountjoy Prison.
Mr Lyons suffered from psychiatric problems which caused him to fear authority figures and to admit to things he had not done. An internal Garda inquiry was held but the report was kept secret. It is understood the report stated that information was contained in the statement produced in the Bridewell station that could only have been known to the murderer and to gardaí.
There has also been no explanation about how this accurate information about the Grangegorman murders came to be in statements alleged to have been made by Mr Lyons. The Lyons family wish to see this report. There were no internal disciplinary proceedings in the Garda and the officer in charge of the Grangegorman case was promoted shortly afterwards.
Meanwhile yesterday, the General Secretary of the Garda Representative Association (GRA), Mr P.J. Stone, said he would like to see clarification of the Minister, Mr O'Donoghue's intentions on introducing a legislative amendment to the Public Tribunal law.
Mr Stone said that while the GRA welcomed the proposal of a public inquiry, "we want to know precisely what the Minister means in terms of his approach to new legislation. Does he intend that there is an open and fair tribunal of inquiry or is he setting up a new type of investigative body that can hear evidence in secret? There are legal and constitutional consequences."