A public inquiry into the Garda investigation of the murder of Séamus Ludlow was urgently needed, an Oireachtas committee was told yesterday. Otherwise his family would believe the State was complicit in the crime.
The legal team for the Ludlow/Sharkey family called for a public statutory inquiry into the 1976 murder of Mr Ludlow.
They made submissions on the seventh and last day of public hearings by the Oireachtas justice sub-committee into the Barron report on the murder.
Committee chairman Seán Ardagh TD (FF), who thanked the family for attending every day, said the committee was required to report its recommendations by March 31st.
Mr Ludlow (47), a forestry worker, was shot dead on May 2nd, 1976, at Thistle Cross, Dundalk, Co Louth. The Barron report said he had no connection with any subversive organisation.
The report said the RUC told the Garda in 1979 it believed four named loyalists were involved in the murder, but the information was not pursued by gardaí.
Counsel Éamonn Coffey said that, from two internal Garda inquiries, the Barron report, two inquests and the committee hearing, there was the basis for family members and the wider public to believe there was a wilful decision by senior Garda members and/or the Department of Justice not to interview the four suspects.
Deirdre Murphy SC said the family knew who killed Séamus Ludlow, and that it was unlikely anybody would be brought to justice. They accepted that Mr Ludlow was a random victim of a loyalist murder squad.
But they wanted a public inquiry to focus on four issues: was the murder properly investigated in 1976?; why were credible leads given to the Garda by the RUC not followed up?; why was the real evidence at the scene of the murder not preserved and what happened to it?; and was a decision taken not to pursue the investigation of the murder and, if so, who took it and for what reason?