Conspiracy crash theory re-examined at meeting

Concealing the involvement of British aircraft in the 1968 Tuskar Rock air crash would have required the silence of a great number of people, the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, has said.

"Either for gain or conscience, nobody would have spoken for 32 years, if that were so," she added.

The Minister was replying to the Fine Gael spokesman on public enterprise, Mr Jim Higgins TD, who asked if the "conspiracy theory" that a British air force plane was possibly in the vicinity at the time of the crash had now been laid to rest.

"It is something that I hope the independent investigators will refer to. I cannot give a definitive answer," Ms O'Rourke told a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Public Enterprise and Transport.

She said that while much was made of the "conspiracy theory" in the 1970 report, it had been made clear in a review by British officials that it would have required about 1,500 people to have kept quiet since 1968 for it to have any validity. The emphasis on the "conspiracy theory" had gained legs, she said, following the 1970 report on the crash.

"Whenever the matter was written up, or debated, that was the theory which abounded, rather than any other possible cause which could be looked into." It was a matter of regret that other causes were not looked at, she said.

The Minister remained "deeply disturbed" by the recently published review of the crash, which claimed the lives of all 61 people on board the Cork-London flight in March 1968.

Mr Higgins said there was concern that the former chief inspector of accidents had failed to refer to the fact that the maintenance inspection report of December 1967 was missing when writing his 1970 report.

There was also concern that the certificate of airworthiness, awarded by the Department three weeks before the crash, was not referred to. It was quite incomprehensible that a substantial chronicle of defects associated with the aircraft had been deliberately omitted from the report, he added.

Another unsatisfactory element of the 1970 inquiry was that the official who approved the certificate of airworthiness was also the chief investigator, he said.

Mr Trevor Sargent TD (Green Party) said he understood that people in aviation at the time talked about the corrosion around the tail section of the Viscount. The fact that no part of the tail was recovered left a question that needed to be answered.

The head of the Department's air accident investigation unit, Mr Kevin Humphries, said it was a fact of life that the type of aircraft involved in the crash always had corrosion. "Corrosion, in aviation terms, could mean the size of a pin-head, and that would be treated. When the aircraft was taken on to the Irish register from the Dutch register in 1967, there were patches of corrosion, which were treated."

The Viscount, he added, was 1952 technology, "so while the accident happened 30 years ago, the technology is 50 years old."

Alison O'Connor, Political Reporter, adds:

Ms O'Rourke said that the possibility that Aer Lingus might have to flag a multi-million-pound potential liability arising out of the crash when the company is being privatised was "hypothetical".

She added that a decision on the matter would not be hers, and that at present matters were not "anywhere near prospectus stage." She said the flotation, which had been due this year, could not now be expected until early in 2001.

The irregularities in the aircraft maintenance record had not been disclosed to the relatives of the victims when they negotiated compensation from the airline, she added.