Editorial: Fifty years after Dublin-Monaghan bombings, it is shameful no one has faced justice

If anything, it is even more grievously unacceptable 50 years after the Dublin- Monaghan bombings – the deadliest atrocity of the Troubles, which claimed 34 lives – that no individual or group has been charged.

Facts, far from being revealed, have been further covered up and buried deeper. A shameful silence and secrecy still surround that dreadful day of carnage on May 17, 1974.

In finding answers, a common inertia prevailed on both sides of the Irish Sea. Thomas Hobbes wrote that ��hell is truth seen too late”, so to deprive relatives of the victims of truth and justice for five decades compounds their hurt and loss.

Thus President Higgins calling out of the “manifest failure” of British and Irish governments to adequately respond to the bombings has been a long time coming. To his credit, he also pointed out how it is “not morally acceptable, nor is it politically feasible”, to ask those affected by the Troubles to forget about the past.

Nothing weighs as heavily as injustice, and these families have been shamefully ignored and left in the dark for decades.

The first rule in hiding a state secret is concealing the fact that it possesses one. But there is hope. In the North, the officer leading an inquiry into the loyalist gang suspected of being responsible for the bombings has said he has no doubt there was collusion between them and the British security services.

Iain Livingstone is examining allegations relating to the activities of the so-called Glenanne Gang, including its role in the bombings.

“I can say categorically there was collusion. We know that to be true,” he told RTÉ.

Deciphering the past from this remove is a chall­enge, but that does not absolve either government of its obligations to do so.

The Dáil has called for the fourth time for all documents held by the British government in relation to what happened to be released.

Relatives of the victims are also convinced our own State has files that could shed light on who was responsible. As President Higgins said, the people of Ireland “stand in solidarity” with the families and loved ones of the Dublin-Monaghan bombings.

The people of Ireland are also entitled to a full explanation as to why no meaningful progress was made in calling anyone to account.

Earlier, at a mass for the victims, Archbishop of Dublin Dermot Farrell read out the names of all those whose lives were so brutally stolen.

He told those attending that the names represent “lives cut short, hopes destroyed, love and longing taken away from those for whom it was created”.

“They’ve not been forgotten, we remember,” he added.

They deserve to be remembered, but they also deserve justice and the truth.