The investigation by Mr Justice Barron into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 was no substitute for a sworn public inquiry, a leading human rights group said yesterday.
British-Irish Rights Watch, which has monitored human rights in Northern Ireland since 1992, said the question of whether the Government would call a public inquiry was a test of the State's independence.
The group's director, Ms Jane Winter, told an Oireachtas committee the British government would find it more difficult to refuse co-operation with a public inquiry than with a "behind-closed-doors" investigation.
Dr Colin Warbrick, a professor of law at Durham University, said any failure to call a public inquiry could leave the Government open to a challenge in the Irish courts under the European Convention on Human Rights.
Ms Winter and Dr Warbrick gave separate presentations yesterday to the Oireachtas Committee on Justice, whose public hearings into the Barron report will finish this evening with a presentation by the Taoiseach. The committee, chaired by the Mr Seán Ardagh TD, will consider next week whether it should call on the Government to initiate a public inquiry into the bombings, which killed 33 people.
Ms Winter said Mr Justice Barron had "no way" of saying that evidence did not exist to support charges of collusion between the bombers and the Northern Ireland security services, because he had not seen the original intelligence files.
"Much as I admire the work that Justice Barron has done, he did not have enough information to make those conclusions." Prof Warbrick said that neither the Barron inquiry nor the original Garda investigation satisfied the standards for an effective inquiry set out by the European Court of Human Rights.
Earlier, a man who believes he saw one of the bombers park the Parnell Street car-bomb said he was never shown any photographs of those suspected.
Mr Séamus Fitzpatrick said he was never treated by gardaí as someone who might have had information that could have made a "special" contribution to the investigation into the attacks.
