Call for inquiry into Grangegorman murders

The Minister for Justice has been asked to order a public inquiry into the unsolved murders of two women in Grangegorman in March 1997.Sylvia Shiels (58) and Mary Callinan (61) were stabbed to death in their sheltered housing accommodation at St Brendan's psychiatric hospital in Dublin. Two separate confessions to the murders were made within months of each other, but no one was successfully prosecuted.

The DPP has never explained why a prosecution was not taken against Mark Nash, who confessed to the attacks when he was picked up for the double murder of a couple in Roscommon. He subsequently withdrew the statement. He is now in Arbour Hill prison for the murder of Carl and Catherine Doyle.

Dean Lyons, a homeless drug addict, had earlier confessed to the Grangegorman killings, and spent time in custody, but question marks hung over the confession. The charges against him were dropped, and he moved to England, where he died in 2000.

Yesterday, Mr Michael Finucane, solicitor representing Ms Shiels's sister, Ms Stella Nolan, sent a letter to Mr McDowell formally requesting the inquiry.

He identified five areas in which the current inquiry had not met the standard under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

Under this Article, the State has to take all steps to protect life, and to investigate all circumstances around the unlawful taking of a life.

He said the investigation had not met the required standard of being independent, effective, reasonably prompt, transparent and involving the next-of-kin to the fullest extent.

If the Minister refused an inquiry, Mr Finucane said his client would take a legal case to compel the Government to hold one. "The existing mechanisms have culminated in nothing. She has been left with no choice."

The Garda investigation had "raised more questions than it answered", and the inquest had failed to shed any light on the case because of the "hopelessly inadequate" legislation governing the work of coroners.

The Dublin city coroner, Dr Brian Farrell, had asked Nash to give evidence at the inquest, but he could not compel him to do so because of what he described as "glaring anomalies" in the Coroner's Act.

Mr Finucane said the inquiry would have to establish:

why no one was ever successfully prosecuted;

why Dean Lyons was charged with the crime, and the charges were later dropped;

what steps were taken to investigate the confession made by Nash but later withdrawn;

what internal inquiries were conducted by gardaí into the investigation of the case;

why the information surrounding the case could be outlined by the media yet "not a scrap of information was ever communicated directly to the surviving sister (Ms Nolan) of one of the women who was murdered".