State may sue UK over bombs inquiry - McDowell

The Minister for Justice has not ruled out taking legal proceedings against the British authorities in the European Courts for their failure to co-operate with the Barron inquiry into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.

Mr McDowell told the Dáil sub-committee considering the findings of the Barron inquiry that the question of whether the State should take legal proceedings against the British authorities was something he would have to reflect on.

The Minister was responding to questions from the Independent TD, Mr Finian McGrath, in relation to attempts by the families of the bomb victims to force the British government to co-operate with the inquiry by taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Mr McGrath asked the Minister if he thought it was acceptable that the families represented by the Justice for the Forgotten group had to take on this action themselves.

"If the implication is that a state versus state action should be taken, I would have to think long and hard about the wisdom of that," Mr McDowell said.

However, he added: "If the suggestion is that the Irish State should commence legal proceedings against another sovereign state, that is something I would have to reflect upon."

Mr McDowell said that Mr Justice Barron had "possibly not received as much co-operation as he would have wished" from the British authorities.

The Irish Government could not itself force the British to comply with requests to provide information and files to the inquiry, or provide spokespeople or representatives of law enforcement agencies, he said. "We have to remember that we're talking about a separate sovereign state. We can attempt to persuade, but we cannot demand."

Mr McDowell said that both he and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, had raised the issue on a number of occasions with the British government.

The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, had earlier this month given an assurance that all potentially relevant information would be given to the Irish authorities. However, he qualified this with the phrase, "consistent with our responsibility to protect national security and the lives of individuals", Mr McDowell told the sub-committee. "We will do our level best to ensure that the British interpret that particular clause in a generous way."

At the time of the bombings, and still today, the minister for justice would never "shadow" or "second guess" the gardaí.

"It follows therefore that any documentation within my Department on the various Garda investigations constitutes only a small subset of the information obtained or generated by the gardaí."

He hoped that the Remembrance Commission would give some recognition of the effects of the events of the 1970s.

"I deeply regret it was not done at an earlier stage."