A new memorial to the victims of the Omagh bomb will incorporate a request from bereaved families and state that their loved ones were murdered in a dissident republican attack, it was agreed tonight.
Relatives of some of the 31 people who died in the 1998 attack had voiced concerns that the inscription on a temporary memorial stone would be amended in a new remembrance garden, which is being built to mark the 10th anniversary of the atrocity.
Omagh District Council tonight unanimously agreed to accept the recommendations of an independent panel that had been tasked to find an appropriate narrative for the tribute.
There will be three parts to the new memorial. And while less contentious language will be used to describe the bombing on an engraving at the site of the explosion and on a wall leading to the nearby garden of remembrance, the families' preferred wording will be carried on a stone wall in the garden itself.
The sentence is: "To honour and remember 31 people murdered and hundreds injured from three nations by a dissident republican terrorist car bomb."
The name of the group which represents many of the families, the Omagh Support and Self Help Group, will be attributed to that particular section of the inscription.
It will form part of a longer narrative that describes in detail the events of August 15th, 1998 and names all the victims.
Former Presbyterian moderator Rev John Dunlop, who headed up the the facilitation panel, said the length of the text enabled them to take in to account as many people's views as possible.
"This was a long narrative so we weren't just faced with choosing between 20 or 25 different words," he said.
"So we decided we were going to put a long story about what happened in the context of the day and in the context of the politics and in the context of what happened afterwards.
"The Omagh Support and Self Help Group represent some families but not all. The group have a particular form of words and we were faced with the decision on whether we were going to incorporate that into the narrative and we took the decision that that was something that we ought to do."
Mr Dunlop, who held 80 meetings with interested parties before finalising the report, said he hoped the narrative would be accepted by all the people of Omagh as a fair compromise.
"For Omagh to be divided on the 10th anniversary of the bomb would be a victory for those who planted the bomb," he said.
The tribute stone which bore the original inscription was removed from the temporary remembrance garden last year to allow work to begin on a new permanent memorial.
Mr Dunlop's team recommended that the stone was not returned to the garden as it did not fit with the new design. However he stressed that the inscription was being incorporated. A copy of the panel's recommendations were couriered to all the victims' families ahead of tonight's meeting at Omagh District Council offices.