Collusion would be shown to be a factor in many more murders committed during The Troubles if the same standards of investigation used in the Smithwick Report were applied to other killings, an Oireachtas committee has been told.

The recently published Smithwick Report concluded that, on the balance of probabilities, collusion occurred between gardaí and the Provisional IRA in the killing of RUC officers Harry Breen and Bob Buchanan.

Mr Justice Peter Smithwick concluded collusion did occur, but did not name any individual members of the gardaí.

The Oireachtas Committee on the Good Friday Agreement today heard from families of the Disappeared and other victims of The Troubles.

Denise Mullen-Fox told the committee her father, Denis Fox, was killed in 1975 by the so-called Glenanne Gang, a loyalist murder squad that included members of the Ulster Defence Regiment.

“He was one of more than one hundred and twenty victims of that gang, which was a unit operating in Armagh and Tyrone with the support and participation of elements of the RUC and the UDR,” Ms Mullen-Fox said.

“Only one of its victims had any connection with violent republicanism. My father was an SDLP activist. My mother, who they also tried to kill, was involved in civil rights agitation from the mid 1960s. They fired 27 rounds at my father and he was hit 17 times. I, at four years of age, sat with my dead father in a pool of blood on our doorstep.”

She said the weapon used in her father’s murder and ten other killings by the gang came from a UDR base.

There has never been an investigation into how into how weapon got into the hands of the gang, she added.

“It was just one of hundreds which went the same route. If we were to adopt the balance of probabilites standard acceptable to Mr Justice Smithwick, then we would find collusion proven in my father’s murder and all 121 cases.

“In reality, almost all of them would stand up to much more rigorous examination.”