Navigating the Political Maze: Britain Obfuscates While Dublin Dithers
- JOHN OBRIEN
- 5 hours ago
- 9 min read
HYDRAS HEAD SCAPPATICCI
Did you know that the Irish state paid Freddie Scappaticci's lawyers €382,270 euros so he could defend himself against the accusation of being Stakeknife? This payment was authorised in 2013. It's about time the files in the Department of Justice on the Smithwick tribunal were made available for public inspection. Hopefully, the Taoiseach's comments in the Dáil mark the beginning of this disclosure process. Scappaticci was not merely an informant; he was an agent funded and controlled by the British state. He operated within a formal control system with multiple levels leading up to the top of Military Intelligence. He was not just a casual informant.
His last will and testament remain sealed in the UK wonder why? The covert involvement of Scappaticci in the Dublin based Smithwick tribunal, since 2007 must also be worthy of investigation since no one, except the tribunal judge and lawyers have any idea what information or intelligence Scappaticci the army's top spy, passed to them.
JUDGE SMITHWICK - WHAT AN EXTRAORDINARY DECISION
The decision by Judge Smithwick in 2014, to award Scappaticci nearly €400.000 euro in legal costs incurred in order that he may defend his reputation and fight accusations he was Agent Stakeknife or highly questionable. Also questionable is the withholding of the intelligence that he shared with them in relation to the allegations of collusion levelled at some former Garda witnesses as the Tribunal investigated the IRA ambush of Chief Superintendent Harry Breen and Superintendent Bob Buchanan in South Armagh.
Freddie Scappaticci gets one cursory mention in the Smithwick Report published in 2013. It's now become apparent that Scappaticci had extensive engagement, including face to face meetings with the Tribunal legal team, which were not revealed to the other lawyers at the Tribunal. The only mention of him is in a paragraph dealing with the question of amnesty. Judge Smithwick refers to amnesties given to witnesses at the Tribunal by Attorneys General in the UK Government and notes that cover for UK citizens was extended to Scotland at the request of Freddie Scappaticci. The brevity is deceptive; material released under FOI (Deirdre Younge) show that by the end of the Tribunal Scappaticci's lawyers including Solicitor, QC and Junior Counsel, were paid nearly €400,000 euro without demur (reduced from a demand for just under €700,000) for less two years representation at the Tribunal, in order that he could rebut accusations that he was the notorious agent. This, even though Scappaticci’s long-time handler only referred to agent Stakeknife in his statements, and only answered questions raised in evidence about Scappaticci by referring to his code name.
TAOISEACH ADDRESSES THE DÁIL - QUESTIONS UNANSWERED
During the Taoiseachs remarks to the Dáil on 11 February he commented that “The Government has consistently called for a victim-centred approach to legacy issues. We should note that Kenova investigators worked to comply with Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights and victim-led investigations”. The Taoiseach failed to deal with a very important point which is that the obligations under Article 2 ECHR refer to his jurisdiction and not the British one. Successive Irish government have allowed British institutions to review matters which are the direct responsibility of the Dublin government. The most obvious of these crimes is the Mass Murder of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 1974. This crime is the single biggest legacy crime of the Troubles and remains a burning issue today.
History Lesson and Lingering Legacy Questions for Dublin
From the outset, the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 17 May 1974 engaged the most fundamental obligations of a sovereign state. Those obligations were clear and enduring: the protection of life within the State’s jurisdiction; the effective investigation of mass murder; accountability where state failures were alleged; the representation of citizens’ interests in dealings with foreign governments; and compliance with international human-rights law, particularly the procedural duties arising under Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. These principles form the benchmark against which the conduct of the Irish State, across five decades, must be assessed.
The bombings killed thirty-four civilians on the territory of the State, the largest mass killing in its history. In the immediate aftermath between 1974 and 1979, the exercise of sovereignty was notably reticent. No public sworn inquiry was established. No independent international or judicial mechanism was invoked. Instead, the Government accepted private assurances from the British Prime Minister that the perpetrators were known and had been interned. Those assurances were neither verified nor documented, no formal diplomatic follow-up was pursued, and critically, the information was not disclosed to the victims’ families. In matters directly affecting Irish citizens murdered on Irish soil, the State deferred to another sovereign power. This was not a failure of capacity but an early abdication of assertive sovereign responsibility.
Through the 1980s and 1990s this posture hardened into strategic silence and political containment. For more than two decades the bombings were treated as politically sensitive yet institutionally dormant. There was no sustained diplomatic pressure on the United Kingdom for intelligence or files. Victims’ families were effectively left outside the protective function of the State, and the issue was managed as a bilateral irritant rather than as a continuing sovereign justice obligation. During this period, sovereignty was exercised defensively, prioritising diplomatic stability over justice for citizens killed in a mass atrocity.
Between 1999 and 2004, under sustained pressure from families, the Government appointed Judge Henry Barron to conduct an inquiry. However, the form chosen was itself an expression of delegated sovereignty. The inquiry was non-statutory, lacked powers of compulsion, and relied on voluntary cooperation from the United Kingdom. Barron confirmed that collusion existed as a phenomenon and recorded that critical British documentation was withheld, yet the State accepted these constraints. By design, the inquiry could describe the problem but could not resolve responsibility. Sovereign responsibility was outsourced to a limited fact-finding exercise that the Government knew was structurally incapable of delivering accountability.
From 2005 to 2008, Joint Oireachtas Committees examined the Barron reports. They acknowledged the inadequacy of earlier investigations and obstruction by British authorities, but parliamentary process substituted for sovereign enforcement. No Tribunal of Inquiry followed and no international legal action was taken. Parliamentary debate became the endpoint rather than the precursor to executive action. Sovereignty was expressed rhetorically, not executively.
The establishment of a Commission of Investigation continued this pattern of managed closure. The Commission operated through private hearings, without cross-examination, and with heavy reliance on UK cooperation. It produced no findings of responsibility and merely reiterated evidential gaps already known. Procedure was used not to open sovereign accountability but to close it down. The appearance of action masked the continuation of sovereign deferral.
EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS - THE STATES OBLIGATIONS
From 2012 to 2019, the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law transformed the legal landscape. Article 2 obligations concerning the effective investigation of unlawful killing were now explicit and justiciable. Yet no Article 2 compliant investigation into the bombings was initiated, and the State did not test British non-cooperation before European institutions. Despite the strengthening of its legal position, the State failed to recalibrate its approach. Sovereignty, even when reinforced by international law, was exercised passively.
Between 2020 and 2025, the Irish Government politically supported UK-led legacy processes, notably Kenova and Denton. These processes have no jurisdiction within the Republic and no power to compel Irish or British state disclosure to Irish victims. No parallel Irish investigation was established. In effect, another jurisdiction was permitted to frame the historical narrative of a mass murder carried out on Irish soil. Sovereign truth-telling was functionally outsourced.
By 2025, sovereignty remains in suspension. No sworn Irish inquiry exists. No definitive State position on responsibility has been articulated. Families continue to rely on litigation rather than State initiative. The Irish State maintains procedural sympathy while avoiding substantive accountability. Over five decades, the pattern has been consistent: harm acknowledged, politics managed, and full sovereign reckoning avoided. The unresolved status of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings is not merely a legacy issue; it is a continuing sovereign omission. There is one significant exception to this hands-off approach. On 28 December 1972 a UVF car bomb exploded in Belturbet killing two people and the Irish government fully endorsed an inquiry into that crime. The Garda Síochána launched a cold case review of this crime in 2022. The question is simple, Why Belturbet and not Dublin and Monaghan, what is one missing. Ther are no good answers.
UK SUPREME COURT 2024 - CLOSING THE DOOR ON NAMING
That omission is now sharpened decisively by the decision of the UK Supreme Court in Thompson (2024). The Court confirmed that the UK Executive may lawfully withhold sensitive intelligence material from disclosure, even where that material concerns alleged state collusion in murder and even where victims’ families seek only a “gist” of the information. The ruling establishes final domestic authority for non-disclosure within the UK system. For Ireland, the implication is profound. The State can no longer plausibly argue that truth will emerge through UK processes. Reliance on British disclosure is now legally foreclosed, not merely politically frustrated.
In this context, continued Irish political support for UK-controlled legacy mechanisms is no longer neutral. Those mechanisms are objectively incapable of delivering full truth, and continued reliance on them places the Irish State in dependency on a foreign sovereign that has asserted secrecy as a lawful end-state. Post-Thompson, reliance on UK goodwill amounts to a knowing acceptance of permanent evidential opacity.
An alternative sovereign approach is therefore not optional but required. First, jurisdictional sovereignty must be re-asserted. The bombings occurred on Irish territory and killed Irish citizens and residents. The Irish State does not require UK permission to investigate what it knew, what it did, and what it failed to do. A domestic sworn inquiry into the State’s handling of the bombings can be established regardless of UK cooperation. Second, the focus must be reframed from the question of “who did it” to the question of “what did the State know”. Thompson confirms that perpetrator identification may never be disclosed, but sovereign responsibility does not depend on naming bombers. It depends on examining State knowledge, decision-making, and omissions, including why families were not informed of information received in 1974.
Third, with UK domestic remedies exhausted, the pathway now lies in international, not British, oversight. The Irish State may pursue inter-sovereign human-rights litigation before the European Court of Human Rights, arguing continuing Article 2 violations arising both from UK non-disclosure and from Ireland’s own investigative failures. Fourth, Dublin–Monaghan must be explicitly decoupled from the “legacy” category. Thompson confirms that legacy mechanisms are structurally designed to control disclosure rather than guarantee truth. Continued alignment with that architecture subordinates Irish sovereignty to British closure priorities. The bombings should be declared a stand-alone Irish mass-casualty case.
Finally, sovereignty requires the establishment of a definitive sovereign record of truth, even if incomplete. A state’s duty is not to solve history but to tell what it knows, admit what it failed to do, and record what was withheld from it. Even in the absence of British disclosure, an Irish inquiry can publish an authoritative account of State action and inaction. The acceptance of evidential limits, openly acknowledged, is an exercise of sovereignty; procedural deferral is not.
The strategic reality after Thompson is stark. The last plausible justification for inaction has been removed. There is no longer a realistic expectation of British transparency. Each additional year of Irish reliance on UK processes is now an affirmative sovereign choice, not an inherited constraint. The barrier is no longer Britain alone. It is Dublin’s decision not to act independently.
DUTY TO ACT
The United Kingdom has closed its system. Sovereignty requires the Irish State to open its own. Failure to do so in the post-Thompson landscape is neither caution nor diplomacy. It is a conscious suspension of sovereign responsibility.
OPERATION DENTON Words Matter
During the Taoiseach’s remarks he also referred to Operation Denton,
It is deeply regrettable that the full publication of the Denton report is not available and has been delayed. In particular, I want to acknowledge the continuing frustration felt by the survivors and families affected by these shocking and tragic events.
While we await the full publication of the Denton report, the summary remains important and offers official recognition that a network of loyalist paramilitaries and “corrupt members of the security forces”, primarily members of the UVF, working with members of both the RUC and UDR, murdered up to 120 people, among them those killed in Dublin and Monaghan in May 1974.
He did not refer to the fact that Operation Denton is something called a Thematic Review. It covers over 100 cases committed in Northern Ireland and by some strange chemistry the Dublin and Monaghan Mass Murders in the republic.
Explanation
A Thematic Review has been described as A thematic review is not intended to function as a traditional criminal investigation. Its purpose is not to secure prosecutions, determine the criminal guilt of specific individuals, or re-investigate every incident from the beginning.
Instead, it is designed to analyse the broader picture—to produce a structured historical account, identify patterns supported by evidence, and examine how systems, networks, and institutions operated.
This is the classis difference between the Stakeknife investigation (Operation Kenova) and the Thematic Review (Operation Denton) of the Dublin Monaghan Mass Murders.
GAS LIGHTING of Operation Denton
Operation Denton is a suspect endeavour because repeated leaks to the media and affirmation by Chief Constable Jon Boutcher have put its alleged findings into the public narrative without a scintilla of evidence. The main lie being propagated is the assertion that the UVF had the unaided capacity to commit the Dublin car bombings. I have researched this area for many years including meeting Mr. Boutcher and appealing to him to present his evidence that the UVF had that capacity.
POD CAST
I recently completed a podcast exploring in the detail the many aspects of this Mass Murder .
https://youtu.be/nQOMyAGRu-A?si=dDeQFSBBMqX--6Ws. Direct YouTube link
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