The following is the full text of the letter sent by Mr David Trimble MP to the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern:
I write in relation to the events in the Republic of Ireland which have become known as the "Arms Crisis", in the light of two unsatisfactory trials and an inconclusive investigation by a Dail Public Accounts Committee. I would formally ask you to give your urgent consideration to the setting up of a fully competent tribunal to investigate the events of the period August 1969 to May 1970.
Such a tribunal should seek to establish the truth regarding the actions of the Fianna Fail party, government ministers and officials and Irish Army personnel during that period. The most pertinent questions to be answered would include whether or not it was Irish government policy to allocate money for the purchase of guns to be dispersed to IRA-fronted "Citizens' Defence Committees"; were the criteria set for the Relief Fund sufficiently precise?; did Irish ministers connive with Army and IRA elements to import guns?; how precisely was the money allocated to the relief fund spent?; and did Irish ministers conspire to create the Provisional IRA and allocate funds as part of a deal between Fianna Fail and IRA dissidents, whereby the latter were promised support for their campaign against Northern Ireland in return for a commitment from the Provisionals to renounce Marxism and to desist from attacking the institutions of the southern Irish State?
As you will be aware, the Arms Crisis created a gulf of mistrust between the unionist community in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which has perpetuated to this day on account of the truth never having been established. In the light of the mass of evidence not available to either trial or the Public Accounts Committee, including the admissions of his own complicity made by the late Neil Blaney, I believe that a tribunal is required by both the interests of justice and of mutual understanding on the island of Ireland. Indeed, it is my contention that the inability of the Irish State to pursue the truth of the events of 1969-70 is a major source of the gulf of mistrust between the unionist community and the Republic of Ireland.
I note that the arguments your Government and its predecessors have employed in pursuit of a new inquiry into Bloody Sunday are equally apposite in relation to the events of 1969-70. Given the apparent involvement of senior figures in the Irish government with the foundation of the Provisional IRA, and in view of that organisation's responsibility for the deaths of thousands of British and Irish citizens, I believe that a refusal to seriously consider a tribunal to inquire into these matters will forever taint the Republic of Ireland with the charge of state-sponsored terrorism.
Yours sincerely,
The Rt Hon W. David Trimble MP