The decision of the Irish and British authorities to conduct a fresh review of the circumstances surrounding the 1968 Tuskar Rock air disaster is, in itself, a welcome development. In its own way, it is a tribute to the commendable work of the Relatives Committee whose campaign for a full inquiry has continued to maintain momentum, some thirty years after the disaster. The question now is whether this latest review, announced after a meeting between the Minister for Public Enterprise, Mrs O'Rourke, and the British ambassador, Dame Veronica Sutherland, has the capacity to uncover the truth.
A total of 61 people died when the Aer Lingus Vickers Viscount, St Phelim, en route to London from Cork, crashed near Tuskar Rock, Co Wexford. It was the biggest single loss of life in Irish aviation history. The precise cause of the crash, which caused the plane to fall 17,000 feet into the sea on a clear morning, is still unknown. An Irish government report in 1970 found no obvious reason for the disaster but, intriguingly, it raised questions about the possible involvement of an unmanned aircraft - a drone target or missile - which "might have been there". Mrs O'Rourke has acknowledged that the full circumstances of the crash remain a mystery.
This week, RTE's Prime Time reported that the British Ministry of Defence has recently examined its missile capability at the time of the crash. It concluded that no land-based British anti-aircraft missile had the range to strike an aircraft off the Irish coast. But, significantly, it also reported that British cabinet papers relating to a missile test site in Wales were extracted from the files in 1982, just as the media renewed its pursuit of the cause of the 1968 crash. The British authorities have always denied culpability for the crash. In recent days, the British Embassy reaffirmed this position, insisting that there "has never been substantive evidence showing that the crash could be ascribed to British military or other action. We were certain as it was possible to be that it has nothing to do with the United Kingdom." As part of the new review, Irish and British accident investigators will look all the evidence gathered after the crash. There is no guarantee that this will establish any new facts - the omens are not propitious - but it does indicate that the campaign of the Relatives Committee is being taken seriously. For all that, the fact that some relevant British material has apparently been destroyed or lost is not reassuring. It is to be hoped that the review will do something more than assemble and review, once again, the same series of files. In the first instance, the Government might insist that all available documentation in the case is released. It might also insist - the Official Secrets Act notwithstanding - that British defence ministry workers and Army personnel should be allowed to tell all they know.
