The Lord Mayor of Dublin and Fianna Fáil European election candidate, Mr Royston Brady, conceded last night that he should have responded to Mr Justice Henry Barron's request for any information he had about the Dublin bombings of May 1974.
The request from Mr Justice Barron followed Mr Brady's suggestion in a Hot Press magazine interview that his father was abducted the night before the bomb attacks of May 17th, 1974, and that his father's car was used as a getaway vehicle by the bombers.
Mr Brady denied last night that his credibility as Dublin's first citizen was damaged after it emerged that he did not reply last November to the request from Mr Justice Barron for information.
Mr Brady suggested this week's controversy over his failure to respond to the judge had been "manufactured" by the media to damage his election campaign.
The controversy followed Mr Brady's repetition of the original Hot Press story in an interview last weekend in the Sunday Independent, in which he said that his father "was taken up the mountains at gunpoint and had to beg for his life".
He insisted yesterday that he had no reason to question the account of his late father. Mr Brady also said he had no wish to exploit his story for electoral gain.
But it is understood that the Barron inquiry uncovered no evidence to back up Mr Brady's assertions about links between the abduction and the bombings.
Mr Brady insisted last night that he did not ignore the judge but said he had nothing to tell him. He said he had informed the Justice for the Forgotten Group of his position. "In hindsight, one would have done things differently. It's not that I just ignored it, I specifically had nothing to add to what they had already read."
The Barron Commission wrote to Mr Brady after its attention was drawn to the Hot Press interview.
Mr Ed O'Neill, whose father was killed in the bomb attack, said: "I am astounded that such a supposedly intelligent man who is running for the European election could make such an unfounded, untruthful and insensitive and callous remark."
