Dublin Mayor ignored bombs inquiry

One of the Dublin government’s main prospects for retaining a European Parliament seat has confirmed that he fáiled to pass on information about the Dublin attacks to the recent inquiry into the bombings.

The news, in the week of the EU elections, have infuriated a group representing the victims of the Dublin/Monaghan bombings.

Fianna Fáil’s Royston Brady, currently the Mayor of Dublin, told the Sunday Independent that his father had been abducted by loyalists and his taxi hijacked on the eve of the Dublin/Monaghan bombings in 1974. He said his father’s car was used as a getaway vehicle by the bombers.

Mayor Brady had been written to by the inquiry after he first made the claims about his father in a magazine interview. The letter was dated November 20th, 2003 and no reply has been received. The Inquiry did not pursue the matter further.

Ms Margaret Urwin, campaign secretary for Justice for the Forgotten said: “He is the first citizen of Dublin yet he Fáils to go and give evidence to the judge conducting the inquiry into this inquiry”.

“Why did he not go afterwards to the Joint Oireachtas Committee inquiry into the bombings which sat from January 20th until March 11th last and which produced a lot more evidence,” asked Ms Urwin.

She said she was also worried Councillor Brady was using the story of his father to garner some sympathy as a means of promoting himself politically before the European elections on Friday.

Mayor Brady said in the interview: “He [his father] was a taxi driver and his car was abducted in Dublin. Then he was taken up the mountains at gunpoint and had to beg for his life, saying he had seven kids under the age of nine. So, in the end, they tied him up and left him there”.

Ms Urwin asked: “If the taxi was hijacked, what happened to it? Was it recovered? And was there a forensic examination of the car”?

Neither the Mayor nor Fianna Fáil have commented on the matter.

Urgent Appeal