Irish Examiner view: Omagh inquiry is a last chance to lay to rest the ghosts of a mass murder
(left) Picture: John Then 15, August Omagh Seamus Amid Lewis/photopress Carnage The First Minister In After On Bombing The Mallon Prescott Deputy Including And Day 1998 Then Prime Politicians Alan The (centre) Deputy Minister British
The Omagh bombing inquiry, which opens at the Strule Arts Centre on Tuesday, may be the last attempt to lay the ghosts of a mass murder that is among the most problematic of the Troubles.
The attack, which killed 29 people, including an expectant mother carrying twins, and injured 220, was the biggest outrage of the conflict. It took place on Saturday, August 15, 1998, in the Co Tyrone town, just a few months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. It was a sunny carnival day and the 500lb bomb was in a stolen car and detonated by the Real IRA at 15.10pm.
Within days, major attention was focussed on the timing of warnings about the bomb and instructions as to its location. Police had cleared an area around the courthouse and guided civilians into the path of the explosion, near a shopping centre some 400m away.
That question of warning has not been answered in 26 years, despite various trials to establish blame for one of the worst acts of criminality in contemporary Ireland. Tomorrow’s statutory public inquiry is an attempt to determine whether it could have been prevented by British authorities.
Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was killed, says the hearings must uncover “uncomfortable truths”. He describes Omagh as the “single-worst failure of security and intelligence in the history of this state”. He campaigned for 10 years, culminating in a judicial review, for an inquiry.
In the chair is a Scottish judge, Alan Turnbull, who was a lead prosecutor in the Lockerbie case, when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up by Libyans in 1988, killing 243 passengers and 16 crew. The plane was en route from Frankfurt to Detroit. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in UK history. Three of the victims were from the Republic of Ireland.
The inquiry beginning on Tuesday was established after the North’s High Court concluded that there was a “plausible case... that the authorities knew the identities of many of those committed to, and involved in, this violent insurrection against the Northern Ireland state and arguably could have done more to disrupt their activities”.
It will be the first time that all the bereaved families, including those from Spain, have come together.
No one has been charged with murder. Given the passage of time and that several prime suspects have died, it seems unlikely that anyone ever will. But, as witnessed in the mounting public anger over the attitude of the previous British government to legacy cases, if Ireland is to move forward and reconcile the past there must be a foundation in truth.
This might prove challenging reputationally, and eventually legally, on both sides of the border. But it is a nettle that must be grasped in this, and other, cold cases.
While retailers anticipate the arrival of Amazon.ie next year — described in detail by our business journalist Emer Walsh this weekend — its workers will be keeping up to date with developments in the company’s stance on industrial relations.
Amazon employs 6,500 people across Cork, Dublin, and Drogheda, and that number is likely to increase once it delivers its “localised shopping experience”.
When the company opened its first Irish fulfilment centre at the Baldonnell Business Park in Dublin two years ago, the Communication Workers Union — the union representing logistics and delivery staff in the Republic — was quick to remind it to respect Irish shopfloor mechanisms and the rights of workers to organise collectively.
At the time, Amazon said its employees always have the choice whether or not to join a union, it’s just that the company didn’t believe unions provided the best answer for them. A spokesperson said:
Relationships elsewhere in Amazon’s empire haven’t been so smooth and, in an English dispute settled last week after 37 days of strike action, workers failed by the narrowest of margins — 0.5% — to achieve their objective of gaining bargaining recognition for the GMB white- and blue-collar union.
Critics say that Amazon uses a variety of techniques to increase the pace and pressure on workers in their warehouses, while the company says it aims to create the “safest and most technologically advanced workplace on Earth”. In Britain, starting wages for junior jobs amount to around £15.4 per hour in one of the world’s richest companies which may go some way to explain support for unionisation and why it is likely to return to the agenda.
‘Think global, act local’ is a phrase beloved of many transnational companies. You can understand why workers might conclude that what’s good for the bosses also works for them.
Three teenagers have died within a month on e-scooters in the Republic, with the latest tragedy involving a 14-year-old boy in a collision with a car in Bonnettstown, Kilkenny, on Saturday.
This follows the deaths of Gilbert Collins, 15, and Avuzwa Idris, 17, on June 27 in Waterford, after the e-scooter they were riding together collided with a bus.
Munster Gardaí have launched a campaign to make e-scooter owners aware of new legislation governing this form of transport. But the question occurs, with Irish roads becoming ever more dangerous, whether allowing them access to our highways has been injudicious and premature.