Initially I felt that, as a member of the Government at the time of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings in 1974, I should await the opportunity to respond to the findings of the Barron report before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Justice, Equality, Defence and Women's Rights, writes Garret FitzGerald.
However, in the light of some media comments, I now feel it is better to address several of these issues before misconceptions become embedded in public consciousness.
The relatives of the victims have been rightly anxious to have the events surrounding those terrible events thoroughly examined.
They have seen no prosecutions for these atrocities. They have seen evidence of involvement with loyalist paramilitaries by some members of the Northern Ireland security forces, including elements of the British army and they have heard media allegations of tolerance of such activities at a higher level in Britain - allegations concerning which, it now transpires, there is no evidence.
The feelings of the bereaved that this appalling tragedy had been forgotten, and their suspicion that in some way it had been "swept under the carpet", are readily comprehensible.
Given the eventual inability of the Garda Síochána to find evidence upon which to charge any of those responsible for this massacre, it would have been better to have launched much sooner an inquiry of the kind Mr Justice Barron has now undertaken. All who subsequently held political office, myself included, must bear some of the blame for the fact that this did not happen.
This lapse of time may have contributed to the disappearance of some relevant documentation, the death of some who would have been key witnesses, and the fading recollections of other participants: all these have made it much more difficult to establish the facts about how this tragedy was dealt with at the time.
I was interviewed by Mr Justice Barron on January 20th last, when, in addition to answering his questions, I made available to him all the documentation on Northern Ireland in my possession, which for several decades past has been lodged with much other historic material in the archives at UCD.
As the minute of my evidence shows, only one of the many issues raised by Mr Justice Barron with me was related to the meeting in September 1974 with Harold Wilson, the British prime minister, at which I was in attendance with the Taoiseach, Mr Liam Cosgrave.
I told Mr Justice Barron that, 30 years later, I had no live recollection of the mention made by the British prime minister at that meeting of the internment of peoples suspected of involvement in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and that in the absence of such a direct recollection I was not in a position to explain why the matter was not pursued.
At that meeting I did not realise that Mr Justice Barron was not familiar with the different roles of the two channels through which security matters are discussed between states. Individual cases are not normally dealt with through political/diplomatic channels, lest such contact prejudice subsequent prosecutions or extradition channels.
Instead, contacts relating to individual cases are carried on between the police forces of states and also, when security matters are involved, between their intelligence agencies which, at least after the Arms Crisis of 1970, keep the Garda Síochána fully informed of any relevant information they obtain.
The role of the political/diplomatic channel is to ensure that processes are in place to deal with all possible security threats and situations. I understand that following the Dublin/Monaghan bombings a review of such matters took place, culminating in a meeting between the minister for justice and the secretary of state for Northern Ireland at Baldonnel in September 1974.
Because Mr Justice Barron was apparently unaware of this distinction of roles, I can see how he may not have understood why at the meetings with Mr Wilson the reference to the particular case of the reported internment of people suspected of the Dublin/Monaghan bombings was not pursued by the Irish side through this channel.
This misunderstanding led, I believe, to the incorrect conclusion that the government of the day lacked concern about the bombings and the bringing to justice of those responsible.
It has even led some in the media to make the absurd suggestion that at the very time when that government was pursuing actively - and ultimately successfully - a case at Strasbourg against the British over brutality at the time of internment three years earlier it was simultaneously "complicit in a cover-up" of alleged British official involvement in a massacre of citizens of our State.
I should, perhaps, add that, contrary to some distorted press reports, the names of those interned were not mentioned to us by the British, and, as one can deduce from the British record of November 24th, 1974, meeting, the British prime minister's mention of the internment of these suspects seems to have been designed to make a political point in favour of internment in Northern Ireland, to which the Irish government was opposed.
With regard to the separate question of passing on to the Department of Justice his reference to the internment of Dublin bomb suspects, the September meeting was between the Taoiseach and the British prime minister, with myself in attendance, so the circulation of notes of the meeting was, of course, dealt with by the Taoiseach's Department.
And, as the distribution list is not incorporated in the circulated documents of this kind, I cannot say to whom copies were sent.
However, I should say that it is my understanding that the Taoiseach regularly received details of Irish Army Intelligence contacts with the British and would therefore have been aware since early June 1974 that the British had already informed our Army Intelligence of the internment of the Dublin bomb suspects, and that this information would have been passed by Army Intelligence to the Garda.
In those circumstances I cannot see why Mr Cosgrave would have felt it appropriate, or necessary, to pass to the Department of Justice or the Garda the information that three months later in September 1974 and again five months later in November 1974, the British, in pursuit of their justification of internment, were still reverting to the information they had given to Irish Army Intelligence on June 1st, 1974. (Incidentally, Mr Justice Barron's report reveals that the RUC had also passed this information directly to the Garda).
I shall refrain from further comment on this matter until the committee hearings. However, I hope that these clarifications may help remove some misunderstandings. I know that they cannot alleviate the hurt of the bereaved at the fact that for three decades they have been the "forgotten people".