I want to use my column today to launch a campaign for the establishment of a tribunal of inquiry into the Campile bombings. Between 1.50pm and 2.10pm on the afternoon of August 26th, 1940 German aircraft dropped four bombs on the small Wexford village of Campile. One of these bombs demolished the local creamery, killing three young women.
In the current environment, when so many events and tragedies of the past are being exhaustively investigated at tribunals or other forms of inquiries, it is imperative that the events of that afternoon in Campile are not overlooked. I am launching this campaign as a self-appointed spokesman.
The Campile community is entitled to closure. Somebody must be held accountable for these events.
Two differing explanations have been advanced for the bombing of Campile that day. One version suggests that the Germans had found butter wrappers from the Campile co-op among the belongings of captured British soldiers and therefore launched the bombing raid to destroy this crucial supply of dairy products to the British war machine.
Another explanation that is often advanced is that the crew of the bombers had strayed off course and thought that they were flying over - and bombing - Wales.
It is not acceptable that there should still be such doubt as to the reasons for the bombing, so a tribunal of inquiry must be established to resolve this conflict.
These things are too important to be left to the realm of history or other academic research.
The Irish government must also demand that the German government co-operate fully with this tribunal and make all the relevant documents available from the military and government archives.
If it transpires that any of the relevant files are missing, then the German government must be asked to give a detailed explanation and, if necessary, a further investigation should be held into the missing files.
The Irish government itself will also have questions to answer at this tribunal. The details of the bombing were only made public in the media on a drip-feed basis in the weeks after the bombing.
Some historians have sought to explain this away as being due to wartime censorship, but many locals have suspicions of a cover-up, and only a tribunal of inquiry will be able to address these concerns.
The terms of reference for this tribunal of inquiry will also have to explore the allocation of monies from a compensation scheme for the victims established in 1953 that was funded by reparations made by the new German government. By the standards of 2006, the monies the survivors got in 1953 were clearly inadequate. Irish ministers and officials of the time, if any survive, and all ministers since must be brought before this tribunal and asked to explain why this event was not more thoroughly investigated before now, and why proper redress has not yet been put in place. True accountability requires nothing less.
Indeed it may even be necessary, in order to dispel any suggestion that there was collusion with the German bombers, that An Garda Síochána, the Army and even surviving members of the Local Defence Force established during the Emergency be questioned. Unless a tribunal investigates this suggestion of collusion, how can we be sure that collusion did not happen?
I know there are many who will resist my proposal for such a tribunal, and they will advance many spurious grounds for doing so.
They will argue that we already have too many tribunals and the cumulative cost is too great; to which I say no price can be put on finding the truth. They will try and argue, for example, that such a tribunal of inquiry would tie up the Department of Defence and perhaps other departments in months of work, finding and organising documents and preparing evidence and thereby absorbing human, administrative and financial resources that they could usefully spend on current problems. To which I say that the Campile community is entitled to answers.
This tribunal of inquiry should be allowed to take however long it deems necessary to complete its work. The truth cannot be rushed. However, if the tribunal does not come up with answers with which the Campile community can agree, then those of us who have campaigned for it to be established reserve the right to reject the tribunal's findings and to demand additional investigations until our suspicions are confirmed.
Once this tribunal is completed, the Oireachtas must debate its report for at least two days in each House. It matters not that this may reduce the time and resources which our TDs and Senators will have to debate present issues or to consider future legislation. Ideally, the tribunal's report should be sent to one of the Oireachtas committees, which should hold further public hearings at which some of those who have already given evidence to the tribunal can again be questioned.
This campaign for a Campile bombings tribunal must be given considerable media coverage, thereby allowing its spokespersons to garner extensive profiles.
Of course, once this tribunal is up and running, the Vincent Browne radio programme must give over at least one programme a week to re-enactments of its deliberations, with follow-up studio discussions by suitable experts on the topic.
Some, no doubt, will argue that instead of wasting so much time and money investigating contested aspects of our past, politicians, public servants, lawyers and even our media should be devoting more of their attention to tackling problems of the present (road deaths, social inequalities, the treatment of older people in care, and so on).
These people argue that any spare capacity that is left over should then be used to better plan our country's future.
However, to these people I say: fear not. I have every confidence that our tribunal and investigation industry is developing at such pace that 30, 40 or 50 years from now, it will be well able to investigate and establish the truth about the mistakes, misdeeds and mishandling of events in 2006.