When asked if his refusal to meet families affected by the Creeslough tragedy was insensitive, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan said his job was not to be sensitive, but to ensure that justice was delivered.
He was speaking to reporters during a cross-Border police conference held by An Garda Síochána and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in Co Cavan on Monday.
On Friday, the mother of 14-year-old Leona Harper, who died in the 2022 explosion, told UTV O’Callaghan’s rejection of a request for a further meeting was a “slap in the face”.
The Harper family have been campaigning for a public inquiry into the blast at a Co Donegal service station which killed 10 people.
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On Monday O’Callaghan said: “Listen, my job is not to be sensitive; my job is to ensure that justice is delivered.
“I’m the Minister for Justice, I want to ensure that the families of Creeslough get justice.
“The only way justice can be provided to them is through the courts and we’re at a very advanced stage of the criminal investigation.”
He said one file has already been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions and that a second was “forthcoming”.
He added: “There needs to be, and I hope there will be, criminal prosecutions in respect of what happened at Creeslough and that’s the mechanism to provide justice for the Creeslough families.”
There will be an inquest and “other statutory investigations” that will take place after the end of the criminal proceedings, he said.
He continued: “If, at the end of the process, there are answers that still need to be provided I’ll certainly consider an inquiry.”
He said he has “no difficulty in meeting the families” and had already met the Harpers in Donegal in December, “but we need to allow time for the criminal prosecutions to be initiated”.
He attended the conference alongside Northern Ireland’s justice minister Naomi Long, Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly and PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher.
The annual event focused on organised and serious crime.
On the issue of online far-right radicalisation Long said: “We’ve seen this develop in Northern Ireland quite rapidly over the last number of years.
“We’ve got to be really clear in everything we say, when we’re talking about issues of immigration, when we’re talking about issues of how we deal with that, that we are not creating a loophole which gives people any kind of validation or justification for intimidation, threat and terrorising vulnerable people.
“It is not for anyone else to take the law into their own hands.”
She said both police forces need to “learn from each other”, and highlighted the importance of sharing information between the two jurisdictions because of the “cross-Border” nature of the crimes involved. – PA
