Reaction - survivors and victims' families: The families of the victims and the survivors of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings considered the Barron Report to be a very important document because it brought their suspicions into the realms of a judicial finding, a press conference was told yesterday.
Mr Greg O'Neill, solicitor for the Justice for the Forgotten Group, speaking at a crowded conference said that as a result of the report: "This campaign is calling on the Irish Government and the Oireachtas committee to take up their responsibilities and to discharge them to the families of the dead, to the survivors and to the people of Ireland."
His statement would reflect the families' initial - but none the less considered - response to the report, he said. "The Justice for the Forgotten Group regards the Barron Report as an immensely important stage in the struggle of families for truth and justice. It is a very carefully worded and considered report, and deals with a number of key matters in a very fundamental and considered way," he said.
The families and their supporters over the years had huge concerns about the State's response to the atrocities. They had suspicions about the level of the Garda response, had suspected deficiencies in the response of the Department of Justice, and had concerns about a cover up.
"Judge Barron's report confirms the validity of all of those suspicions. The suspected concerns of these deficiencies have been confirmed and are officially established. The families, the dead, the wounded, the survivors, the children of the dead and the people of Ireland were grievously let down by the government of the day and by the police force of this country," Mr O'Neill said.
The absence of files from the Department of Justice with which the judge could examine matters of fundamental concern to the terms of reference, was damning in the extreme. No reasonable explanation had been forthcoming. "And we are left with no alternative but to draw the most negative inferences from the absence of these files," he said.
"The combination of incompetence, and downright carelessness on the part of those charged with protecting the citizens of Ireland is absolutely damnable," Mr O'Neill said.
If Judge Barron had only established that as an official fact, he had achieved a great deal. It provided the basis for the families and the people of Ireland to go to the Government, to go the Garda Síochána, to go to the people who had responsibility for these matters and say it was no longer our burden, he said.
If those files were not found, they needed to find out why they went missing. There were people who were available in this State who would need to be put in a witness box and cross-examined. The time for private enquiries into these matters is over, he said.
Mr O'Neill added that it had been suggested that members of Justice for the Forgotten had walked out of the Oireachtas committee but this was untrue. They had wanted to meet all the relatives to discuss the report.