In 1981, when the general election came around, I ran for neither the Dáil nor the Senate, though I had been a member of one or other of them for the previous 12 years. Amid the larger excitement of the election, with the appearance of new faces, I was able to slip away quietly, without any announcement or farewells, writes Justin Keating.
Though I had lots of strong opinions about the government of which I had been a member from 1973 to 1977, I forbore to publish them and did not respond to media enquiries.
Now, 20-odd years later, and with all my anger leached away, I want to break silence and comment on the Barron Report into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974, which left 34 people dead. I ignored the media requests for a response until I had read the report carefully, and this I have now done. My reactions are different from those of other Ministers of that Cosgrave-led Government who have made public comment, and since I demur I feel a duty to put my beliefs into circulation.
A few peripheral comments first. There seems to me to be an effort to rubbish the Barron Report, and to criticise adversely the retired Supreme Court Judge, Henry Barron, who was its author. I know him very slightly in a personal sense, but over many years I have heard quite a lot about him. I believe that we are extremely lucky that a person of his calibre was available to succeed the late Mr Justice Liam Hamilton. Mr Justice Barron is nobody's man, except his own. He has the reputation of being absolutely straight and upright, and of being the possessor of a very powerful legal mind. If I have heard criticism over the years it is that he was meticulous about the small print of a case to the point of nit-picking - surely a virtue in this inquiry.
I think his report is splendid, I accept his findings and my only regret is that uncooperative outside forces, including those in the UK, prevented him from going further.
As a judge, working in a very sensitive area, he can only categorise something as fact if the evidence is strong enough to stand up in a court of law. He makes meticulous distinctions between fact on the one hand and probabilities or possibilities on the other hand. Very properly in my view.
But life is not like a court of law. We do not live and decide and act only on the basis of what we can prove to be true, but on the basis of what we have strong reasons to believe to be true. When I come, in a moment, to comment on some of Mr Justice Barron's conclusions, I will offer beliefs and opinions which I cannot prove to be true in the law-court sense, but which I nonetheless hold that I have good grounds for believing.
Taking Mr Justice Barron's conclusions in order (pages 268 to 288 of the report) I offer the following comments and responses.
- That the Garda investigation was inadequate. Yes, I believe that.
- That they failed to involve the appropriate official, the Attorney General, in their decision on prosecution. True also.
- That the Government of the day (of which I was a member) showed little interest in the bombings. With great regret I have to say that this corresponds to my recollection. But as Minister for Industry and Commerce, known to disagree with Dr Conor Cruise O'Brien about Northern Ireland, I was often excluded or bypassed on such matters.
- "That members of the security forces in Northern Ireland could have been involved is neither fanciful nor absurd, given the number of instances in which similar activity has been proved." This is well said. I go further. On careful reading of the whole report and the script of the unrefuted Hidden Hand documentary, and on other information (not evidence) from the time, I believe that Northern Ireland security forces were involved. The question that immediately arises is "up to what level?"
The bumbling, ineffective but decent Northern Ireland Secretary, Merlyn Rees, in my opinion, would certainly not be an accessory to murder. And security people do not if they can help it either furnish information to an inquiry from another state, or indeed put in writing such decisions. And indeed often do not tell their political bosses.
In the last sentence of his conclusions, Mr Justice Barron states: "Unless further information comes to hand, such involvement [by British security - JK] must remain a suspicion. It is not proven." This is fair and judicial. But the commission was severely handicapped by failure to co-operate on various sides and by the loss (deliberate destruction?) of significant documents. What Mr Justice Barron calls a suspicion I believe to be true.
In general I think that Mr Justice Barron got it right, and I congratulate him on difficult work well done. I accept his findings. Though as Minister for Industry and Commerce I was far from the immediate problem, and believe that some of the details were concealed from me, on the basis of collective Cabinet responsibility I apologise with a whole heart to all those who, in May 1974 and since, were let down by the Government - families, loved ones and the whole population.
Justin Keating is a former Labour Party Minister for Industry and Commerce