Omagh Bombing

Baroness O'Loan Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Suttie (LD)]

My Lords, I too am grateful for the opportunity to discuss the Northern Ireland Secretary’s Statement from last week and I very much echo and agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon.

The decision to hold the inquiry is welcome. It is the right decision, and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland should be commended for it. He listened, and he changed his mind. He has given the families and community in Omagh the hope that they will now learn the truth. As Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was murdered on that day, said:

“This is not a case of deflecting the blame from those who are responsible—that was the criminal terrorists who planned, prepared and delivered this bomb into Omagh. What we’re looking at is the failings of the people that are there to protect us.”


The murder of 29 people, including two unborn children—twins—happening as it did just months after the signing of the Good Friday/Belfast agreement in 1998 was a truly appalling and barbaric act of an unprecedented scale throughout the Troubles. The devastation to the community and the impact that it has had on the victims and their families, as well as the 220 people who were injured, is almost unimaginable. It is a credit to the peace process that the terrorists did not succeed and it was not derailed.

The Secretary of State said in his Statement,

“the inquiry will allow us to meet our article 2 procedural obligations under the European convention on human rights”.

That is also to be welcomed.

Will the Minister say what he expects to be the timetable now for the announcement of the chair of the inquiry and the publication of the terms of reference? How will he undertake to keep Parliament informed? Like the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, I am slightly surprised by the different type of approach to this inquiry from that of the legacy Bill. Will the Minister say a little more about how he imagines this very different process will fit in with the proposals in the current legacy Bill?

The families of the victims and the injured have already waited nearly 25 years. It will, at times, be a difficult and painful process, but as Michael Gallagher has said,

“If we don’t have this process, for the rest of our lives we’re going to be wondering ‘what if’.”

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords—

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office (Lord Caine) (Con)]

I am sure the noble Baroness will have her opportunity shortly. I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Smith of Basildon and Lady Suttie, for their broad support and welcome for my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland’s announcement.

Before I respond in detail, I would like to place on the record my own heartfelt sympathy for the victims of the terrible bombing that took place on 15 August 1998. As the noble Baroness reminded us, it was only a few short months after all the hope and optimism that was generated by the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. Like many noble Lords across the House, I can vividly remember where I was and what I was doing on that terrible Saturday when I heard the news.

I add my own tribute to the Omagh families’ Omagh Support and Self Help Group, and to other groups, such as Families Moving On, for the work that they have done over the years. In particular, I join those who have paid tribute to Michael Gallagher for his campaigning over the years, not just for a public inquiry, but in respect of the civil case which took place over a number of years and identified four culprits behind this dreadful atrocity.

I concur very much with what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, said about never forgetting who actually carried out this atrocity. I can do no better in this respect than to quote the judge, Mr Justice Horner, in his ruling on this in the Gallagher court case. He said:

“It is important not to forget that the responsibility for this terrible atrocity, the worst in the last 60 years of Northern Ireland’s history, lies with those malevolent and evil dissident republicans who, with complete disregard for human life, planned, planted and detonated a huge bomb among shoppers in Omagh’s town centre on a Saturday afternoon in August.”


I concur with every one of those words.

I am grateful again to the noble Baroness for her kind words about the Secretary of State. He met the families last week in person, before the Statement, in order to tell them of his decision. As we noted, the families obviously very much welcomed what the Government have announced.

Both noble Baronesses talked about the legacy Bill and the difference in approach. The House will be aware that the legacy Bill itself will deal with Troubles-related cases between 1 January 1966 and 10 April 1998, when the Belfast agreement was reached, so this case is by definition outside the scope of the legislation. Were it to be put in scope, it would have a consequence, which I do not think would be particularly welcomed across the House, of enabling people who were involved in this and subsequent dissident republican activities—people who rejected the Belfast agreement and the peace process—to apply for conditional immunity in certain cases. As I say, I do not think the House would welcome that.

However, I do not entirely accept that there is some kind of total contrast between what we are doing here and what we are doing on legacy. Of course, not every case can have a public inquiry, but the legacy Bill seeks to establish structures, which will enable families to access greater information about what happened to their loved ones in the Troubles, in much the same way that a public inquiry will try to establish the facts of what happened in this particular case. So I do not necessarily accept the premise of the noble Baronesses’ comments.

On their other questions about the chair and terms of reference, we will of course work as quickly as we can to identify the person to chair the inquiry and finalise the terms of reference. I should point out to noble Lords who are not necessarily familiar with the process that the inquiry will be targeted in scope and will investigate the four grounds which the court held could give rise to plausible arguments that there was a real prospect of preventing the Omagh bomb. These relate to the handling and sharing of intelligence; the use of cell phone analysis; whether there was advance knowledge or reasonable means of knowledge of the bomb; and whether disruption operations could or should have been mounted, which may have helped to prevent the tragedy. Those will be the areas on which the inquiry will focus. As I say, we will set this up as quickly as possible. I cannot give a definitive timetable, but I will undertake to keep Parliament informed in the usual ways.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest: I carried out an investigation into matters relating to the Omagh bomb and published a report in December 2001. I very much welcome the announcement of this inquiry and pay tribute to Michael Gallagher and all those who have fought for knowledge of what happened on that terrible day. When I published my report—I remind the House that I had only the powers to investigate the police—I said:

“The persons responsible for the Omagh bombing are the terrorists who planned and executed the atrocity. Nothing contained in this report should detract from that clear and unequivocal fact.”


I repeat that today. I express my sympathy to all those affected by the bomb, because, as noble Lords have said, this is going to be a very traumatic and difficult experience for them, because it will raise again the things that they have suffered for so long.

I shall just ask the Minister a couple of questions. Can he assure the House, because of the questions that have been asked in the media, that this will be an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005? Can he assure the House that the terms of reference will be sufficiently wide and, in particular, that they will encompass all intelligence and information received prior to the Omagh bomb which related to Omagh, and that it will not refer only to—I quote from the Statement—“knowledge of the bomb”? I ask this in light of the fact that detailed information was received on 4 August 1998 by the police that there would be an attack on police in Omagh on 15 August, the day on which the bomb exploded. It is vital that all intelligence is capable of being considered by this inquiry.

Finally, I join noble colleagues in asking the Minister whether—in light of this recognition of the Government’s legal obligations and the fact that those legal obligations did not terminate as a consequence of the Good Friday agreement, nor was it ever the intention of those who entered into the Good Friday agreement that it would effectively act as a statute of limitations in any way—he can confirm that His Majesty’s Government will now withdraw the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill. It is not compliant with those legal obligations.

[Lord Caine (Con)]

It is with some trepidation that I rise to answer the questions of the noble Baroness, given her previous role as a distinguished Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland: she probably knows as much about this case as any other living person. In answer to her questions, of course I can confirm that the inquiry will take place under the Inquiries Act 2005. The inquiry will have full powers of compulsion and access to all the relevant material. Naturally, we expect as much of the inquiry as possible to be conducted in public, but as she will understand, some of the material will be of such a national security-sensitive status that it will not be possible in all circumstances.

On the terms of reference, I refer to the targeted nature of the inquiry in respect of those areas where the judge has held that we have not fully discharged our obligations. The final terms of reference are, of course, a matter to be decided between His Majesty’s Government and the individual who chairs the inquiry, but I very much take on board the noble Baroness’s comments about the Northern Ireland legacy Bill, which has been debated extensively in your Lordships’ House.