Before the Division, I was about to speak about a couple of cases that have given rise to concerns on my part and the part of others about the manner in which the police ombudsman’s office conducts its investigations.
I was going to talk about Loughinisland in a little detail, from the perspective of a public representative, but I will not now go into the detail, because of your advice, Mr Owen, that we may stray into areas covered by the judicial review. I shall merely say that, to date, the findings of court proceedings have not eased my concern about the manner of the report, the findings that arise from the report and, in particular, how evidence was gathered and those conclusions were drawn. I will not go into any further detail about the Loughinisland case, save to say, of course, that we must not lose sight of the fact that in each of these cases there are human tragedies.
In relation to Loughinisland, the murder of six Catholics by the Ulster Volunteer Force in 1994, in the Heights Bar, while they were watching a World cup game, is to be condemned without reservation. The issue for me is not that justice should be done for those six men—because it should—and that the perpetrators should be brought to justice; the issue for me is the police ombudsman’s findings in relation to the case.
I shall focus, perhaps a little more than I had expected to, on another case. It involved the killing of two people in the Creggan estate in Londonderry on 31 August 1988. It is sometimes referred to as the “Good Neighbour” bombing. It is a very tragic story, which in a way epitomises the tragedy of the Northern Ireland troubles. The resident of a flat at 38 Kildrum Gardens on the Creggan estate had been kidnapped by the Provisional IRA. They had planted in the property a booby-trap bomb that was permanently affixed and was designed to be triggered when someone entered the property—at any time. In that sense, it was an indiscriminate device: it would kill whoever walked into the property.