Speech by the Taoiseach at the 40th Anniversary Commemoration of the Dublin/Monaghan bombings

It was almost the Summer. The month of May signalled by First Communions.
 
Children going to school with the first flowers for the May altars the stems hot in their small hands in tinfoil or brown paper.
  
In the shops in Talbot Street and Parnell Street checked shirts and sandals were appearing in the windows. 

After school young teens were hunting for gold paint platform boots in honour of Eurovision winners ABBA. 

In Dublin people were shopping others heading for the parks.  
For workers it was almost going home time.
  
It was Friday, the best evening of the week.
  

But unknown to them unknown individuals were planting Death …….. beloved of Hatred,  here in our capital city and in a border town.

When they were done four bombs exploded to be heard across Dublin across the island of Ireland and across the world.

The impact would be felt across the generations memory the history of our country
In the litter of conflict 34 people lay dead or dying.

Among them Anne Marie O’Brien aged four months.
Her big sister Jacqueline aged 16 months.
Their parents Anne and John in their early 20s. 
 
Colette Doherty was 21 she was nine months pregnant and died along with her unborn baby.  
There was a young Frenchwoman Simone Chetrit. 
There was an Italian -Antonio Magliocco father of three.   

Around these innocent dead 100 more lay injured.   

In the pre-history of Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter, we watched the news, we listened to the radio we read the papers, mesmerised, horrified.

In the case of others many of them with us here today they didn’t need to turn a dial or a page to absorb the news.
 
In four separate seconds mass murder entered their lives installing itself through the generations. 
Its sudden Presence signalling eternal Absence.
 
Absence of a wife, a husband, a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister, a neighbour, a friend. 

Today, on behalf of the Government and the Irish people, I say to each and every one of you – that those you loved and who died on that day will never be  ‘Forgotten’. We will do all we can to make sure they will have the ‘Justice’ that is their right and that you demand for them.   

Dignified, detailed and painstaking as the Barron Inquiry was 
I know that no such inquiry, no publication, no hearings by an Oireachtas Committee can ever make up for the horror inflicted on your people, your families, your lives on this day 40 years ago. 

And as we commemorate the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings this Government continues to urge the British Government to allow access to documents relating to these murders. 

As Taoiseach I have been raising the issue with the British Prime Minister David Cameron.
  
The Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, has also raised the matter with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Certainly dealing with the past, dealing with the legacy of hatred on this island is difficult.

But for all its difficulty it must be done.  

For sure there is no simple formula of words or actions that will make things right
Such a formula does not exist you never expected that it would. 
But this Government is committed to working with the British government and our colleagues in the Northern Executive to find ways to deal with the damage and the legacy of the conflict in Northern Ireland. 

Today as we honour the dead and injured of the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings we commit ourselves again to creating the kind of changed society as emulated in the Good Friday Agreement, North and South.

On this special day of commemoration I want to pay a warm, national tribute to everyone involved in Justice for the Forgotten.
You have done magnificent work campaigning on behalf of the victims and their families.  
You have been steadfast in your commitment you have been an outstanding support for families in the last almost 20 years.  
Last Summer I met with some of you and indeed with members of the families. 

You gave a voice not alone to the dead and injured but to the relatives the friends for whom life was never the same physically, emotionally and psychologically.      

Today then as we commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings as we honour and remember the lives lost 

It is right that the names of the Dead be heard again in the streets of our their capital city, and Marie has read them aloud here today. 
 
It is for their sake and for the sake of all those who died or were otherwise devastated by the conflict on this island that we can and will never return to the dark to being derelict of understanding, compassion, tolerance, forgiveness.

In the 40 years since 1974 the dialogues have changed and multiplied on this island.

We cannot and should not forget the past but it behoves us each of us particularly the politicians the activists to commit ourselves fully and completely to a peace that will bring prosperity in all its forms to all the peoples all the communities of our island.
For the sake of the dead we commemorate here today and of all those who survive them – we can do no less.