For those bereaved and injured in the August 1998 Omagh bombing, the inquiry into the atrocity brought hope that, finally, they might get answers.
Could the UK authorities have prevented the bombing by Real IRA dissidents that killed 29 people including a woman who was pregnant with twins on a sunny Saturday afternoon?
This week, that hope collided with reality.
Over two days of opening statements, the inquiry heard from the UK government and Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) on the logistical challenges they faced in providing documents and exhibits to the inquiry.
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The slow pace of disclosure has led to an “unfortunate” gap of nine months, as lawyer to the inquiry, Paul Greaney KC, put it; the inquiry cannot now begin considering the bombing itself until March 2026, almost two years after it opened.
Michael Mansfield KC, representing the family of one of the victims, 57-year-old mother of three Libby Rush, cut to the chase.
“It cannot be said that government departments were not on notice,” he said.
“Once this happened on the 15th August, 1998, are we to imagine that state authorities didn’t immediately have meetings ... which should have ensured the preservation [of materials] – not ‘Oh, we only got notice yesterday’.”
In fairness, the task facing them is not inconsiderable. The PSNI has so far made ready 26,000 documents and 2,000 exhibits and reassigned staff. This is a body that is so pushed for resources that earlier this month 24 police officers were reallocated from tackling domestic violence and sexual abuse to deal with public disorder.
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Both its barrister and that representing the UK government repeatedly stressed their commitment to assisting the inquiry. None of their explanations, Philip Henry KC said for the PSNI, were an excuse but rather “a candid explanation of what is involved, so that expectations are realistic”.
Yet the difficulties continued. It emerged that a document said to be missing, then destroyed, was subsequently found. The inquiry chairman, Lord Turnbull, echoed families’ concerns “over statements made by state bodies about apparent inability to locate relevant documents” and warned any such assertions would be subject to “the most rigorous scrutiny”.
There were concerns, too, around sensitive material and how this will be approached, particularly given the relevance of intelligence, including warnings said to have been passed on by an alleged British agent, to the answers the inquiry is seeking.
Last month it emerged a “considerable body of material” had not been shared with the inquiry because of applications by the UK government and the PSNI to redact information. This, said barrister Stephen Toal KC, representing the families of five of those killed, “speaks to a defensive instinct, not a transparent one.”
Just ask the family of Seán Brown. The GAA official was abducted and murdered by loyalists in Bellaghy, Co Derry, in 1997, the year before the Omagh bombing. The UK government is currently challenging a court ruling that it must hold a public inquiry into his killing.
That the Omagh investigation is happening at all is the result of decades of campaigns and courtroom battles, not least by Michael Gallagher, whose 21-year-old son, Aiden, was among the victims. He brought the judicial review which resulted in the High Court judgment ordering the UK government to set up the inquiry.
That same judge also recommended a similar inquiry south of the Border. The Irish Government was repeatedly criticised this week for failing to do so, though Lord Turnbull said he took the repeated assurances he had received about Dublin’s commitment to assisting the inquiry “in good faith”.
Alan Kane KC quoted the future taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Dáil in 2004: “You will get your truth, and so will Ireland.”
“Talk is cheap,” said Toal of both governments. “They make warm statements about solidarity, but these families have learned to measure words against deeds.”
As Lord Turnbull observed, some of those listening to the proceedings “may have been thinking to themselves that if the various secretaries of state and other ministers involved had not so staunchly set their face against a public inquiry over the very many years and very many times that such requests were made, the problems now being grappled with would not be so acute.”
Yet, he said: “We are where we are.”
Where we are is that the legacy of the North’s Troubles still has not been dealt with, and the Omagh inquiry goes to the heart of one of its enduring tensions, the interests of national security versus the rights of individuals to life, to justice and to truth.
The bereaved and injured have already suffered through decades of delay, obstruction and denial, broken promises, frustration heaped on devastation, and it is clear this inquiry will be a lengthy and complex one.
States will always seek to protect their secrets, but a way must be found to balance these interests with the “moral imperative”, as one family barrister put it, to provide the answers which have been so desperately sought by so many, for so long.
This is the reality; ultimately the hope, said Michael Mansfield, representing the Rush family, is that “this public inquiry represents the beginning of the end of the story of the Omagh bombing”.
