Minister for Justice Michael McDowell is seeking approval from the Department of Finance to establish a commission of inquiry into the Dean Lyons affair, The Irish Times has learned. Carol Coulter, Legal Affairs Correspondent reports.
This concerns how an innocent man came to confess to the murder of two women brutally killed in their home in the grounds of St Brendan's psychiatric hospital Grangegorman, Dublin. Charges laid against him were later withdrawn.
It is understood Mr McDowell has recently written to the Department of Finance seeking funding for a commission of inquiry. He has also written to the family of Mr Lyons and to a legal representative of a sister of one of the victims.
This follows the receipt of a report from senior counsel Shane Murphy of a private inquiry into how Mr Lyons, a homeless drug addict, "came to make the confession and what lessons can be learned from that occurrence, in an effort to ensure that anything similar does not happen again".
There was initial reluctance on the part of Mr McDowell and his predecessor John O'Donoghue to hold an inquiry despite widespread concern.
It is understood that Mr Murphy's report on the Dean Lyons affair is based on the examination of documents rather than interviewing witnesses.
Sylvia Sheils (59) and Mary Callinan (61) were stabbed to death in their beds in March 1997. They appeared to have been the victims of a frenzied knife attack.
Mr Lyons was arrested and made an elaborate and detailed confession to the killings. He was charged, but the charges against him were later withdrawn. He later died in England.
Meanwhile, another man, Mark Nash, killed two people in a savage knife attack in Co Roscommon in August of the same year. During questioning by gardaí he also confessed to the killings, with details that only a person at the scene could have known. He later retracted this confession and was never charged. He is serving life sentences for the Roscommon murders. The charges against Mr Lyons were not dropped until seven months after Nash's confession, and he was released.
There has been a sustained campaign for an inquiry into how Dean Lyons came to confess to the murders while in Garda custody, both from the families of the victims and from that of Mr Lyons.
The campaign has had the support of a number of Opposition politicians, including Labour leader Pat Rabbitte and independent TD Tony Gregory.