CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 359-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

NORTHERN IRELAND AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

OMAGH BOMBING

Monday 16 March 2009

Senate Chamber, Stormont, Belfast

MR MICHAEL GALLAGHER and MR GODFREY WILSON

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 39

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee

on Monday 16 March 2009

Members present

Sir Patrick Cormack, in the Chair

Mr John Grogan

Mr Stephen Hepburn

Lady Hermon

Dr Alasdair McDonnell

Mr Denis Murphy

Stephen Pound

David Simpson

________________

Witnesses: Mr Michael Gallagher, Chairman, and Mr Godfrey Wilson, the Omagh Bombing Victims and Survivors Group, gave evidence.

Q1 Chairman: Could I welcome you both. We were expecting four of you, but you are most welcome, Mr Gallagher and Mr Wilson. This is a public evidence session, as you know. In other words, everything will be taken down and there will be a published transcript. For that reason, if you feel at the end that you want five minutes with the Committee in private we will be very happy to grant that facility to you. Could I say at the beginning in welcoming you that I do not think I need to tell you how much the Committee is in sympathy with you and those you represent. The purpose of this afternoon's session is for us to ask you questions and for you to give whatever answers you wish. I hope you will appreciate that we can make no comment this afternoon on such issues as a public inquiry. The Committee will deliberate after we have had your evidence. This must not be taken as being a statement either for or against that particular subject. We will question you on it, but because of what has appeared in the papers I did not want you to think that we would be in a position to make any comment on that this afternoon because when we go back we shall want to deliberate in Committee on what you have said. We have invited Mr John Ware to give evidence before us and we may invite others also to give evidence before us. That merely sets the scene for you and I hope is helpful. Before I begin any questioning, is there anything that either or both of you would like to say to the Committee?

Mr Gallagher: Could I just say, first of all, that we welcome the opportunity to come here and talk to you firsthand about something that is very important to us in our lives. I do recognise that you are the people who are asking the questions, but I have got an executive summary and it may be useful if I read it. It gives an overview of many of the problems that we have encountered over the past ten years. I have got a couple of copies of that statement so that the note taker does not need to go on overtime to keep pace, if that is agreeable with you, Sir Patrick?

Q2 Chairman: Is this a long statement, Mr Gallagher?

Mr Gallagher: I do not think it is long. It is nine pages.

Q3 Chairman: That is a bit too long to give as a statement, if you do not mind my saying so, because that is going to take you a good 12 minutes or so to read. If you could just make a few comments and then we can go on to our questions. Please leave that with us as additional evidence so if any of the points are not covered in the questioning we have that, but if we have a very, very long statement from you it cuts down the amount of questioning we can have. What I suggest is if you want to make some of your main points and then leave that with our clerk and I promise you we will take every item in that statement most carefully into account. Please feel free to refer to it at any time during your evidence and in your opening comments. If Mr Wilson has any opening comments he wishes to add, please feel free.

Mr Gallagher: As you know, the reason we are here is as a result of a tragic event that happened on 15 August 1998. Our only son, Aiden, died in that atrocity and Godfrey's daughter, Lorraine, who was 16 at the time, died in the bomb. I can remember sitting on the 16^th thinking, "Well, everybody knows who is responsible for this and there is so much goodwill right across the country, everybody is saying this is such a small grouping, they are renegades and out of control". I never would have imagined that I would be sitting here over ten years after the event trying to persuade people that we need closure. We came together as a group of bereaved families almost immediately. Some of the families I knew personally and some of them I had never known before. We did come together as a group of people and very shortly formalised ourselves into the Omagh Support and Self-Help Group. We were people from right across the community. Certainly I had never been a member of a political party, I had been a self-employed person and had cut my own rut in life, as it were. I did not necessarily need to be thrust into this, but it was my own choosing to be thrust into this because on 3 June 1984 my youngest brother was assassinated by the Provisional IRA so I felt that I could not sit back and let two wonderful people's lives connected with my family count for nothing, there had to be a stand taken. It was for that reason that I took on the particular role that I did. The Group itself is made up of people from right across the community, people of all religious and political opinion. Indeed, one family is Mormon. We have a meeting usually once a month. We have set up a management committee. We are in a formal structure and are a registered charity. When we have those meetings we do not ask anyone to leave their politics or religion outside the door, but we tend to concentrate on the things that unite us rather than the things that divide us, and that is a quest for justice. Of course we supported the police, we supported the Garda Siochana and all the apparatus of state, the intelligence services, et cetera, but after a couple of years it became clear there were serious problems in the Omagh investigation and we went from one crisis to another. The documents that I have handed over graphically illustrate a lot of the problems we have had over the years on both sides of the border.

Q4 Chairman: Could you just give us one or two examples of that. I appreciate you have given a number in the document which will be circulated, but if you could just give us one or two examples that would be both helpful and interesting.

Mr Gallagher: In 2002 we saw Colm Murphy convicted for his part in the Omagh bombing. Ironically, it was the result of a television programme that John Ware made entitled Who Bombed Omagh? that was the catalyst for that. He identified a number of individuals who were alleged to have been involved in the Omagh bombing and Colm Murphy was one of those people that John Ware actually confronted in Dundalk. As a result of the light being shone on him, if you like, the Garda looked more closely and he was convicted in 2002. In 2005 he appealed the conviction. Two of the Garda officers lied consistently in the witness box - those were the words of the presiding judge - and as a result of that his conviction was quashed and he is awaiting a retrial. That is a very long time to await a retrial. Omagh is riddled with things that it is very hard to understand. We were confused and really did not know where to look. There were no convictions on the horizon in Northern Ireland. We decided to take a civil action, and both Godfrey and I are involved in that civil lawsuit. It will not put people behind bars but it will apportion blame. The court can apportion blame. There are five people involved in that, five people who are alleged to have participated in the Omagh bombing, and also the organisation, the Real IRA. Our legal team, Lord Brennan, is making the closing speeches this Friday. That was one direction where we went as families. Some of the other families chose not to take that direction.

Q5 Chairman: How many families are in your group?

Mr Gallagher: It is always a difficult thing to quantify. I would say that probably more than half of the bereaved families. Our membership stands at around 200. It is difficult to quantify how many people are involved in the Group because people drift in and out. Some people who were initially involved in the Group have left and that tends to be what happens, maybe their needs were met and they have moved on in a different direction. What I can say is we are very representative of the people affected by the bomb, both in the bereaved and injured.

Q6 Chairman: Could you tell us what you are currently doing to support individual families, bereaved families, ten years after the event?

Mr Gallagher: Of course. In the Group we have a registered office. We moved to a new office which is quite close to the bomb scene and I feel that was a very positive move because people have moved closer to the bomb scene. The charity shop involves people and brings people from the community into the shop and it also gives the people in the Group an opportunity. If I could just say what our objectives are. They are the relief of poverty, sickness, disability of victims, the advancement of education and protection. These are things from the charitable side. If I could go to the activities: "The above objects are reflected in the work of the Omagh Support and Self-Help Group: advice, advocacy and support". We have a welfare advisor, somebody who advises on welfare issues, because when you get an horrific incident such as that you get many people who are dependent on benefits for a long time and, indeed, some people for the rest of their lives. From that point of view, we have someone who comes in and assists with form-filling and advises people on what benefits they are entitled to, a benefit check if you like. We do IT training courses because many of the people had their education disrupted as a result of being affected by the bomb and, indeed, some people would have had no IT training whatsoever, including myself. We run computer training courses at two different levels, for beginners and advanced. We run a programme of complementary therapies where people get various types of complementary therapy. One of the big projects that we are running, and have run for the past three years, is an archive of historical material. We felt it was important to collate all of the information possible, both in the written media and the transmitted media, the broadcast media, and to that end we have the archive project, which is a very big project. We have a website and we have an archive on that website that is updated constantly. There are people working all the time on the archive. We are doing exactly what we are doing here now, lobbying for change for victims. We do youth work and we have a youth section to the committee where young people take part, they run their own sub-committee. We have advice and information for carers on how to support people who are looking after people who are injured. The work can vary. For the last three months we have had an art class that runs every Wednesday night and people come in and do a whole programme of different types of art: water painting, glass painting, interior design. It is quite varied, it depends at any one time. All of the services that we provide to our members we try to gain funding for so it allows people who have a limited budget to take part. There are some very enjoyable things that the Group does. We have social outings where we arrange to go to the theatre or go and visit National Trust properties or just have a day at the seaside. The programme is quite varied.

Q7 Chairman: That sounds very impressive. You are obviously devoting an enormous amount of your personal time to this.

Mr Gallagher: Almost ten years, without pay.

Q8 Chairman: Without pay.

Mr Gallagher: Without pay. We only have one and a half people working in the Group who receive pay. One is a young woman called Donna McCauley who is our Project Co-ordinator who works from nine o'clock to 5.30 who runs and organises many of these programmes. We have another lady who comes in and does the admin.

Q9 Chairman: This is all greatly to your credit and it is helpful to have that background. Since we met informally in Omagh in the late October of last year we have had the publication of the Sir Peter Gibson Report. Could you give the Committee your reaction to that?

Mr Gallagher: We had grave concerns about Sir Peter Gibson dealing with this matter. The Group has been here before because in the Republic in 2002 there was a similar accusation made that the Garda mishandled intelligence and as a result of that the Government set up a team called the Nally team and they interviewed witnesses and carried out an investigation into these allegations. The problem that we had was they were three key former top civil servants in the Irish Republic and we felt they did not have the independence from the Government that was needed, they had no investigative skills to carry out this work and when their work was completed, like Sir Peter's, it was a document that it was feared if it went into public circulation could assist terrorists. We felt we were going to be back here, as it were, people talking about things. We had one hand tied behind our back. We had very limited knowledge. We got a document that was released by Sir Peter, and I cannot remember the exact number of pages but it was not much more than the statement I was going to read here at the beginning of this meeting, and we do not know how many pages were in the report that the Prime Minister or others received. In fact, I wrote a letter to Sir Peter asking for the terms of reference of his inquiry and I never even got an acknowledgement or a reply. We do not even know that. If I could put it very succinctly: he used a particular line of language to indicate that to track the movement of people in cars in 1998 was not possible and yet we have seen the government experts and private companies, telephone companies, give similar evidence in our civil action in front of the court with diagrams and described how you can track the movement of a phone. They are not saying they can - the word has been used in this report - "pinpoint". Of course they could not pinpoint a mobile phone, but what happens is when a mobile phone moves between transmitting stations it logs off one and logs on to another, so if you can calculate the time it logged off one and logged on to the other you can give a fairly precise location of where that vehicle has been, the direction and speed that it is travelling. I am very reluctant to speak in detail about this subject because I am aware that John Ware is talking about it on Wednesday and he has a greater knowledge of the subject than I do. The concern that I have is the Prime Minister, the Taioseach and even the President of the United States got involved in some way in this investigation at the earlier stage, they indicated there should be a resolution to it and that the perpetrators should be brought before the courts. For that information to have been available, and do not forget in Sir Peter's report it does not say that the movement of the vehicles and telephone numbers were not known, that should have been passed at the earliest possible stage to the senior investigating officers. That is the concern I have got, that it took the RUC almost nine months trawling through millions of telephone billing records in order to achieve the telephone numbers that literally if the intelligence services had co-operated, policemen, let it be RUC or Garda, could have put their hand on the shoulder of the people on that very evening.

Q10 Chairman: Mr Gallagher, I want to bring in Mr Simpson, but before I do so, just so that we are absolutely clear on this, you are saying that in spite of Sir Peter's report and your subsequent meeting with the Prime Minister you still remain very unhappy on this subject? That would be a correct interpretation, would it?

Mr Gallagher: I think there are a number of key issues that have not been answered stemming from Sir Peter's report.

Chairman: Thank you very much. If, by chance, those issues do not come up in questioning this afternoon then you and Mr Wilson can of course supplement your evidence by writing to our clerk and we will be able to have that as well.

Q11 David Simpson: Can I start off by thanking the two gentlemen for their presentation. Right across the board in Northern Ireland they will have a lot of sympathy. They have to be congratulated on their persistence as an organisation in the past ten years. I was going to comment that we know exactly how they feel but I think that would be a wrong comment because we do not know what the families went through in Omagh and for any families caught up in victim-hood in any shape or form it is a tragedy and our hearts go out to them. I do not know if you are in a position to answer this, but I will put it to you anyway. If you were to put the blame at the door of someone for the failure of conviction, and we have, of course, the Garda, the police, the judiciary and politicians, who would you blame for the failure of not achieving your goals to this present day?

Mr Gallagher: I think you are quite right in your opening comments. I feel it would be wrong of me to place the blame on anyone and that is why we do need the inquiry. There is one thing I want to make clear at the beginning of this conversation. We will not remove the blame from those who are responsible, and that is the Real IRA. They took responsibility for it. They are the people who created an extremely lethal and dangerous situation in Omagh and expected others to deal with it. Our call for an inquiry is not to shift blame from those who rightly should receive that blame, but to see what went wrong and what should be done to put it right. The problem is that we live in an environment in Northern Ireland, and I know I can say it in this room, where whenever any of these questions are asked people will always say in relation to Omagh, "Well, that is a security issue". As far as we are concerned, the security failed at the point when the bombers closed the car door and it then became a public safety issue. I have a substantial file, I do not know if it is appropriate to leave it with you or not, but it covers a vast amount, a vast area, including town centre evacuation and emergency planning. One of the reasons that it is important to have an inquiry into these types of things is I have three summarised versions of reports that were carried out. The first one is into the Oklahoma City bombing and that occurred on 19 April 1995. It was a bombing without a warning. It was home-grown terrorism. There was no warning call. As a result of that, seven different inquiries were carried out into a whole range of organisations and how they performed. It is a fascinating piece of work. You can get this on the internet. As a result of this work the Federal Emergency Management System was set up, which is a system where, whether it be a national disaster or a terrorist act is committed, there are resources from a whole range of states that come and assist those in trouble. As a result of the Oklahoma City bombing that system was set up and people benefited on 9/11. People got on a plane, a train or whatever and went to where it was. The other report that I have got is a report on a terrorist attack that happened in Saudi Arabia at a place called Khobar Towers, and it is entitled A Personal Accountability for Force Protection. This was a US military base that a truck bomb was planted outside and 19 US Marines died. As a result of that, the US Government wanted to know why 19 of their young men, along with a number of Saudi Nationals died, "Could we have done more to prevent that?" As a result of that, they carried out a very extensive inquiry. It is a fascinating read. When you start to read this, some of the things are exactly the same as Omagh. As a result of what happened the base commander was returned to the United States, it was recommended that he would never be in a position where he would be accountable for people's personal safety and it was recommended he would receive no further promotion, along with a number of recommendations for US bases at home and abroad. These are the positive things that come from an inquiry. Going back to the most basic one that I can always remember, the Titanic, as a result of the Titanic every ship that sails today has enough lifeboats for the people on that ship. We get a bit screwed up when we talk about inquiries. The other one is the bombing of the US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. This was a bomb that occurred on 7 August 1998, just a week before the Omagh bombing. They carried out an inquiry to see what weaknesses and strengths there were in the protection against terrorism at their bases, their embassies, their establishments both at home and around the world. That is the reason why it is important to carry out an inquiry.

Q12 Chairman: May I just stop you there because you have made a very important series of points. You will know that when this Committee reported on the cost of policing the past we said that we did not feel there should be more public inquiries unless there was really broad consensus amongst all the political parties in Northern Ireland because of the time that they take and their vast cost. Both of those are very significant factors. The Bloody Sunday Inquiry has been going on and on and on and we have recently had a further delay. By the time Lord Saville reports we will have had an expenditure in excess of £200 million. Largely because of this the recent consultative group, Eames-Bradley, has come down rather against further public inquiries in its very important and thoughtful report. What sort of inquiry is it that you want and how do we get over - please do not read anything into what I am saying - these very real points of cost and duration?

Mr Gallagher: Sir Patrick, this is something that we face daily. You are absolutely right, I am appalled at the cost of inquiries and the fact that QCs and law firms end up millions to the better from our pain. At the inquest in 2000 I was one of the few people who did not instruct my solicitor to take part in that because the question at the coroner's inquest was how somebody died. I did not need an inquest to tell me how Aiden died, I knew how he died. The law firms had some of the highest paid QCs in this country at the inquest. It sat for three weeks and deliberated and at the end of that process I do not think we gained an awful lot. I am not in favour of dragging this out and costing hundreds of millions of pounds. Whilst you have quoted me the worst example of a public inquiry, let me tell you that Dublin is probably the European capital of public inquiries. They call them tribunals. Some of them have equally been a disaster and very expensive, but some have worked very well. In fact, people have even gone to jail as a result of some of those inquiries. Could I just point to an inquiry that took place in London and I did not hear anyone talk about the cost or the length of it, and that was the Hutton Inquiry into the death of the Government scientist, Dr Kelly. The issues that had to be dealt with in that inquiry were as sensitive as the issues to be dealt with in this inquiry. The witnesses were from the Prime Minister down, intelligence services and committees that I had never heard of were involved in that. This is a unique inquiry because it is cross-border. There must be somewhere in Europe where there has been a cross-border inquiry. There must be a template for this somewhere. The families are not interested in bankrupting the British Treasury, that is not part of our mission here. What we need is closure. We will co-operate with the Government to look at ways of minimising the cost of an inquiry and reducing the time.

Q13 Chairman: What particular things would you expect the inquiry to look into? You have been very clear and unequivocal in saying you know who to blame, the Real IRA, for this despicable, appalling crime, for which none of us can find adequate words of condemnation, but what would you hope the inquiry would deliver up?

Mr Gallagher: Obviously we would look at the intelligence that was there prior to the bomb. You asked me earlier on to highlight some of the deficiencies that we have had to face over the ten years. There was an American agent called David Rupert who worked for the FBI initially and then was jointly controlled by the FBI and MI5. In April 1998 David Rupert communicated with his handlers via email. He was a very prolific emailer and sent almost 4,000 emails in his period of operation in Ireland. I have seen every one of those emails. In April 1998 he did say in the circle that he had access to that Omagh was considered to be a serious target because of its police and military installations. That message never got through to the RUC. In fact, Sam Kincaid, the Assistant Chief Constable, told us in February 2006 in Omagh that they had just learned of this information, it had never been shared with the RUC. I am sure people who served in the RUC would want to know why that information was never shared. We would like to know because it put Omagh, as it were, in the firing line. In Sir Peter's statement he says there was no indication that Omagh was a target in August 1998, but I would suggest there were quite a number of indicators that suggested that Omagh was a target. There was a phone call on 4 August 1998 to the police station in Omagh saying that there was going to be a terrorist attack on 15 August 1998. The police themselves investigated this and later the Police Ombudsman investigated it. He has not yet made his formal report on it but I am aware that the report is inconclusive. A Special Branch officer was the key person who was alleged to have made the phone call and it is my understanding that officer has now been cleared. The families cannot understand how somebody 11 days before the Omagh attack made a 15-minute phone call to the police station in Omagh, said there was going to be a terrorist attack on 15 August and that was what did happen on 15 August. When the McVicar Review, which reviewed the Omagh bomb, learned about this and asked for the serious threat book, which is the book in every police station which records serious threats, the book for the period of August 1998 was missing. The documents were there prior to and after August. It was in the station commander's desk. There has been little or no explanation and it has never been found. There are so many anomalies that need to be addressed. In this file I have given you, I find it very difficult off the top of my head to quote all of the incidents.

Q14 Chairman: One would not expect you to be able to do that. I understand that. You have got something there Mr Wilson wanted to draw your attention to.

Mr Gallagher: Godfrey is also stating, and quite rightly so, that Omagh was not an isolated incident. Up to that point there were 29 terrorist attacks right across Northern Ireland from Belfast to the most north-westerly point administered from Belfast, which is Belleek. On 1 August 1998 a bomb exploded at Bambridge. The recognised codeword of the Real IRA, which was Marda Pope, was used in that incident. There was a serious terrorist attack at Lisburn city centre but the device failed to investigate and, again, the codeword was Marda Pope. I am not blaming the police on duty in Omagh that day, but when all of these factors are put together you ask the question why when that word was used on 15 August 1998 in the Omagh incident room did the red lights not go off? There were two Land Rovers with DSMU officers inside ready to deploy to Kilkeel in County Down on public order duties. I think there was an Orange demonstration and they were there to make sure there was no trouble. They were sitting in the Land Rovers, they heard the radio traffic, the police on the ground trying to clear the street and at that initial point there were something like four officers. They made themselves known to the people in the incident room and they told them to stay where they were, but on their own initiative they did go into the town and help to evacuate, but sadly it was too late to make a difference. There are so many anomalies that a public inquiry needs to address.

Mr Wilson: This is a statement by Sir Peter. He states: "In August 1998, security forces across Northern Ireland were alerted to the risk of terrorist attacks, but not to the fact of any particular town at immediate risk. It is to be noted that the attacks referred to in the previous programme were all in towns to the south-west of Belfast, well distanced from Omagh. There was no obvious reason why Omagh should be attacked."

Q15 Chairman: Yes, this is Sir Peter.

Mr Wilson: Surely when the threat was across Northern Ireland all stations should have been on alert.

Chairman: Point noted.

Q16 Lady Hermon: Sorry I was a few minutes late coming into the room. Mr Gallagher, we have met on a number of occasions where you have spoken with great dignity and great patience about what has been a very personal loss to you and to other families. I have heard a view expressed saying that the Panorama programme was probably very upsetting to the Omagh families. Was that actually how you found it or did you find the Panorama programme helpful?

Mr Gallagher: Lady Hermon, what I would say is after what happened on 15 August, sadly it takes a lot to shock the families. We are always saddened to hear that there are deficiencies which could have made a difference either to prevent what happened or to catch the culprits. I and some of the other families have worked with John Ware over the years and have found him somebody who always put the best interests of the families to the forefront. As I said earlier, it was his programme, Who Bombed Omagh?, which put Colm Murphy in the dock. He is always working from the point of view of good intent. You are always shocked and obviously the thought is what could have been, and that is a very difficult thought. This is why I feel a public inquiry is important. Ten years ago there were certain people in the Garda, RUC or intelligence at that time who had certain loyalties but, as time has moved on, those loyalties with new people coming in are not as strong. For example, new people coming in and seeing something on a file say, "I am not taking responsibility for this. I should talk about it". For that reason we feel there will be revelations to come. Have everything put on the table, let us know all of it and let us deal with all of that and then we can get on with our lives. I have got a life at the moment, and I know for many other families it is the same, which is suspended. It was suspended on the afternoon of 15 August 1998. I know what I have done over the past ten years has been my own choosing to some extent but I feel I had to do what I have done. I would not like to go through the rest of the life that I have left being known as the father of Aiden Gallagher who died in the Omagh bomb. I want to have some life of my own. I want to go and do things. I do not take any comfort from doing these things, I just feel I have no choice, although in some senses I do have a choice. It is important to get everything out. Let us get all of that dealt with and, as I said earlier, not drag it out for years, not cost millions of pounds. We are in a trap here. What I asked the Prime Minister to do was to help bring closure to the Omagh families, that is what we are asking, help us bring closure.

Q17 Lady Hermon: Did the Prime Minister give you an indication, Mr Gallagher, that in fact there would be closure while he was Prime Minister?

Mr Gallagher: He did not, but I did not expect him to do that in all honesty. I did feel that he was a very genuine and sympathetic person, but I felt there were certain constraints on the Prime Minister.

Q18 Lady Hermon: Such as?

Mr Gallagher: There are people who will be saying, "You have got to think of national security here. You have got to think if we go down the road of exposing all of our techniques the terrorists will gain from our knowledge". The tragedy of this is we support the intelligence services, we understand the reasons why they do things, we understand more than most, but we feel that we need closure. I cannot walk away and say, "Well, it was just one of those things", it was not just one of those things. What brought it home to me was last week or the weekend before last when we had two young soldiers who were gunned down for no reason whatsoever and a policeman who gave 20 years' service to the community who had everything to live for, his family and to enjoy his retirement, just for somebody to make a political point. This is why I do what I do. It is not to weaken the system, it is to strengthen the system. If we are seen in some sense to be bashing the police, we are only bashing the police and intelligence services so that they will bash the people who do these things, that is where we want to make a difference.

Q19 Chairman: There is this conflict, is there not, between needing the closure, wanting to feel that everything that can be done has been done, and, on the other hand, the necessary protection of the police and security services. That, in a way, was why the Prime Minister asked Sir Peter to conduct the inquiry that he did. Have you sat down with Sir Peter and been through his report with him?

Mr Gallagher: You are absolutely right, that was what Nula O'Lone did but she made a very damning report on the police investigation into Omagh. She came to Omagh, gave her report to the families, gave us an opportunity to question her on that, and, to his credit, Sir Ronnie Flanagan also did that. This man has not even sent an acknowledgement of our letter. I may have a copy of the letter here that we sent to him saying that we would welcome the opportunity to talk about these things and asking him about his terms of reference, but we never even got an acknowledgement. It is obvious this man felt that he had a particular task to do and we were incidental to that task. That is the message, rightly or wrongly, that we are receiving as families.

Q20 Chairman: So even at this stage you would welcome the opportunity of sitting down quietly on a confidential basis with Sir Peter?

Mr Gallagher: Absolutely. We would not turn down any opportunity to learn more about what happened at Omagh. I thought that the Prime Minister was unfairly put in that position because he was trying to answer questions on what is a very technical subject and this is a man who has got a country of 60 million people to look after along with all the other worldly things. In the bigger scale of things we recognise this would be well down his priorities. With Sir Peter, whilst we welcomed the opportunity because it showed a degree of sincerity on the Prime Minister's part, I think it would have been very appropriate to have had a meeting with Sir Peter for the families to have an opportunity to talk to him about the issues that were in the report in a similar way that we had done with Nula O'Lone and Sir Ronnie Flanagan.

Chairman: Thank you very much for that.

Q21 Lady Hermon: Could I just venture one other issue and that is we are bound to have a general election at some stage in the early part of next year at the very latest. Have the families given any serious thought to meeting with David Cameron who may become the next Prime Minister of the country and perhaps would have a different view from that of the present Prime Minister? Has that been considered by the Group?

Mr Gallagher: Lady Hermon, you are absolutely right, and this is the point I made earlier, that when new people come along they feel they are not going to be a victim of the baggage so, therefore, they are willing to open up and allow difficult issues to be dealt with. They can always, of course, say, "Well, we weren't in government. We weren't responsible for this or that decision". The answer to your question is yes, we feel it would be very important to talk to David Cameron and, indeed, the Lib Dems. In Northern Ireland we have talked to almost all the political parties and have made them aware of the issues and had a PowerPoint presentation. I think it is appropriate that we talk to David Cameron because we do not know the outcome of a general election but it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he will be the new Prime Minister and that is certainly something we would welcome, absolutely.

Q22 Chairman: May I just ask for clarification. You said you had seen almost all the political parties here.

Mr Gallagher: Yes.

Q23 Chairman: Have you not seen Sinn Fein?

Mr Gallagher: We have not seen Sinn Fein. Probably the reason that we have not seen Sinn Fein is because we have very real difficulties with Sinn Fein. I am a democrat and I accept that Sinn Fein is part of the Government, I have no difficulty with that, but I have difficulty with the fact that people who gained their power through violence and terrorism are now in government, although that is a side issue. Sinn Fein did not support Omagh, unlike in the events of the last fortnight where they did come out wholeheartedly and supported the community to come out and give any information they had about the deaths of the two young soldiers and the police officer, and I welcomed that.

Q24 Chairman: In the light of that, would you now welcome a meeting with Mr McGuinness or some of his colleagues?

Mr Gallagher: I think it is unnecessary because Sinn Fein have already stated publicly that they do support our call for a public inquiry. I have no difficulty going anywhere and sharing a presentation with anyone but they have already stated publicly that they do support our call. Again, I am a democrat and I have no difficulty with any democratic party.

Q25 Dr McDonnell: I have very much enjoyed Mr Gallagher's presentation and I thank him and Mr Wilson for all that they have done to represent not just their own families but the extended collective of victims in Omagh. My big worry, and this is not negative, is as you see in a lot of inquiries you may not get the outcome that you feel you deserve. How would you feel in circumstances where you would get an inquiry and maybe it stumbled a bit and you ended up with less than the full and frank disclosure that you anticipated or would have liked to have had?

Mr Gallagher: If both the British and Irish Governments are open and transparent and co-operate fully with that inquiry I have got to be the democrat I just said I am. I feel I would accept that. I have no preconceived ideas about what the outcome will be. I feel that answers are very important and a large part of what drives me is to try to create change and improve systems that have not worked, and obviously they have not worked when I am sitting here ten and a half years after the event. I do believe there will be a positive outcome from the inquiry. Whether it apportions blame in the way some people perceive --- Obviously there is a certain amount of deficiency within the system, both north and south, I think everybody accepts that. That point has been made before that it might not have the outcome that we would want and the short answer to that is let us wait and see what an inquiry delivers.

Q26 Chairman: I want to bring Mr Murphy in but these are very important things and I would like to go back to the point I made earlier. You said you would welcome the opportunity of sitting down with Sir Peter and talking through his report with him.

Mr Gallagher: Yes.

Q27 Chairman: Do I correctly understand from that that if such a meeting could be arranged and if you were indeed persuaded - if - that his inquiries had been totally comprehensive and diligent and accurate that you might then feel there was not a need, bearing in mind the difficulties of bringing things out into the public, to go down this other route?

Mr Gallagher: That is a very important point. It is important to know that we have been calling for a public inquiry since 2002. We did not learn about the GCHQ information until it was broadcast on 15 September last year. Lady Hermon will be aware of that. Our call for an inquiry is not based on this GCHQ story by John Ware. We have a whole raft of issues which are highlighted in this document. We have called for this inquiry for a long number of years unaware of that intelligence.

Q28 Chairman: Yes, I do appreciate that, but my question was based on the Gibson Inquiry. If you met him, and it is not in my gift to arrange such a meeting or in the gift of the Committee, and you were indeed persuaded that all those new issues brought up in the programme had been properly addressed - if - would you then feel perhaps that the need for a public inquiry was not so great?

Mr Gallagher: The need for a public inquiry is great, but if what transpires from such a meeting is that we are satisfied with GCHQ's handling of the situation then that need not necessarily be part of the inquiry. How could that address all of the other issues? Obviously it could not. What GCHQ has done is just put petrol on the fire, if you like. Our own solicitor signed an affidavit that was read out in court two weeks ago, and you may be aware of this, that states there was a listening device in the car that delivered the bomb to Omagh on 15 August. There was a listening device covertly planted in that car and there was a transcript and recording of what was said in the bomb car and the transmission ended round about the time the bomb detonated. That was what I was talking about earlier. It is a drip feed of very difficult information and facts for the families to deal with. There may be other things that are equally as damaging in the pipeline, and we certainly know there were people involved in the plot to bomb Omagh who were government agents, who were senior members of the Real IRA and who were working for one government agency or another.

Q29 Chairman: A final question from me for the moment. If you did not get your wish for a public inquiry, bearing in mind what Dennis Bradley has said, do you think that the Legacy Commission that the consultative group has recommended might be able to deal with some of these other issues which still give you such painful and acute concern?

Mr Gallagher: I would find it difficult to understand how the Legacy Commission could investigate. We feel that these issues need to be dealt with in a public and transparent way and there needs to be some judicial element to it where people come before a judge and swear on oath as to the statements that they are making. What I take from the Eames-Bradley group is they do recognise that Omagh needs closure. I take the statement that you made earlier about the difficulties in having public inquiries for every death that happened in Northern Ireland, but the Eames-Bradley group have not said that. What they have said is it is too expensive and we should not continue to go down the route of public inquiries, but what they have said about Omagh is we need closure and more or less that it is up to Government to work out a system of getting that closure with the families. As I mentioned earlier, my brother was assassinated in June 1984. I am not asking for a public inquiry into his death. What we have is a catalogue of failings and shortcomings over that ten year period that has to be addressed in a proper and transparent way and the only way that can be done is within a judicial framework. I have dealt with the Eames-Bradley group and, to be honest, I do not think they would have the capability or the skill to deal with the issues that we need to be dealt with in connection with Omagh.

Q30 Mr Murphy: Apart from an inquiry, gentlemen, what more do you think the British Government could do to assist the families?

Mr Gallagher: Which inquiry?

Q31 Mr Murphy: The public inquiry that you are looking for, or are there other things the Government could do to assist the families?

Mr Gallagher: It is a very difficult question to answer. We feel that victims of terrorism need to be recognised not as victims of crime but as victims of terrorism. For instance, last week I was at a conference in Madrid and part of what we are doing is looking at how victims of terrorism are treated and we are trying to take that through the European Parliament so that a person, whether they live in France, Italy, Holland or Northern Ireland, is treated equally, they have the same status. As victims of terrorism, to the best of my knowledge, in law we have no status, we are considered under the criminal justice system, not separate from that. I am not talking just about Omagh here but 7/7, Bali and all the other incidents. Victims of terrorism need some status in government and the Government should be looking at that and not lumping us together in the normal criminal justice system.

Q32 Mr Murphy: Did you raise that issue with the Prime Minister when you met him?

Mr Gallagher: It was a very intense meeting.

Q33 Mr Murphy: I can imagine.

Mr Gallagher: Although he was very generous with his time, the meeting was very focused and went in a particular direction. When I came out of that meeting there were many things I thought I would have loved to have raised but you cannot raise all of these issues.

Mr Murphy: I feel exactly the same when I leave the Prime Minister's office, believe me!

Q34 Lady Hermon: Could I just pick up on something that you said a little while ago, Mr Gallagher, but it was very significant indeed. Am I right in picking up the reference to your belief that perhaps it is protecting special agents, I think that was the phrase that you used, and that is the main reason why so far you have not been allowed a public inquiry and you suspect that you may not get a public inquiry? Is that at the back of your mind?

Mr Gallagher: The intelligence services, and I can understand why, will always say that human intelligence assets are key and must be protected at all costs. I met the Home Secretary a number of years ago and said to him the policy we have had in Northern Ireland from the intelligence point of view has been, "We cannot do anything about the bomb that has just happened, but let's keep our assets in place and we will try and do something to prevent the next one". That policy has actually left almost 4,000 people in their graves. I said to the Home Secretary, "Let's try the reverse of that policy. Let's try and put the people in jail who committed the last atrocity and, therefore, they are not in a position to commit the next atrocity. Let's try that policy and see how it works". I think that the intelligence services are not using the information that they have as vigorously as they could in this country, not in GB, not in the United Kingdom. Let me tell you the reason why. Over the past five years we have seen over 40 terrorists, al-Qaeda and Muslim extreme terrorists, put in jail for planning terrorist acts, for assisting terrorist acts. You know the people I am talking about, the people who tried to attack the transport system and also the people who tried to bring down airliners. That was all fantastic work by the intelligence services, I am glad that happened. Those people were put in jail, they were brought before the courts with proper evidence on a jury trial, no intercept evidence needed, all done properly. Our intelligence services, because it is my intelligence service, can say to the American intelligence services, "We don't need to put people in Guantanamo Bay, we can have proper evidence and convict them". That is why I believe in the Omagh incident there are so many discrepancies that we are at a loss as to why these bombers and people associated with them, the service providers, were not put in jail. We had the trial of Sean Hoey and he was facing 58 serious terrorist charges. Let me tell you, you would not like to face one of those serious charges but this man faced 58 terrorist charges. He was acquitted of all terrorist charges at a cost to the taxpayer of £16 million. I am not making any comment either way whether Mr Hoey is innocent or guilty, but when someone is facing 58 serious charges a lot of work went into that, a lot of preparation and planning, and Godfrey and I and others sat through the 56-day trial and it was so disturbing that we contacted Sir Desmond Rea and the Policing Board and asked them to come to Omagh on 17 October. Bear in mind the trial only started in September. We raised our concerns that the trial was of such a shoddy state that the Policing Board should send observers in to monitor it to see for themselves what was happening but they never did that. It was of no surprise to the families when the Hoey trial came up with the verdict that it did. Sorry to be long-winded.

Q35 Chairman: No, we note very carefully what you say. We are coming towards the end of our allotted time. We are very grateful to you for what you have said and I do promise you that whatever the Committee finally decides to report, you have been a very impressive and powerful witness and we shall certainly reflect very carefully on what you have said and at least you do have the great advantage of knowing that everything you have said this afternoon will be published because this is a public session. I did promise you at the beginning a brief private session if you would like one. Would you like one or not?

Mr Gallagher: Do you feel there is any value in leaving this document with you? I do not want to burden the Committee.

Q36 Chairman: I would like you to have a private word with our clerk about that afterwards. The answer to that may well be yes, although I would hope you have copies of everything, that is very important. Our clerk will talk to you. Are there any points you wish to raise privately?

Mr Gallagher: Godfrey, I have done a lot of talking.

Q37 Chairman: If you do I will clear the public gallery if you wish to talk to us privately.

Mr Gallagher: Are there people in the public gallery?

Q38 Chairman: There are people in the public gallery, yes. Not a vast number but there are.

Mr Gallagher: What we have said we believe is factual and from the heart.

Q39 Chairman: Leave it at that.

Mr Gallagher: We would be more than happy to supply any more information to any Members of the Committee here or those who are not here.

Chairman: That is very kind of you. I speak for every single Member of the Committee who is here when I say that we are grateful to you and Mr Wilson for coming. We appreciate the way in which you have frankly dealt with our questions. There is quite a lot for us to reflect on and deliberate about. We certainly accept your offer that if there are specific points our clerk will come back to you. I want you to know that the Committee would be available to see you again privately, maybe publicly but certainly privately, if you feel you would like to see us. Thank you so much.