A welcome intervention from Charlie Flanagan over RTE’s disturbing decision to show unbalanced documentary

Charlie Flanagan revealed that he had put questions to the Republic’s state controlled national broadcast about the film by Sean Murray, son of the prominent republican Sean ‘Spike Murray.

The film was based on the claims of a number of people including the former IRA member Paul O’Connor of the Pat Finucane Centre and the loyalist terrorist John Weir.

Weir is a lying, sectarian, murdering former policeman. The much respected former Special Branch detective and author William Matchett has written about how Weir was viewed with contempt by his RUC colleagues.

Yet RTE broadcast ‘Unquiet Graves’ earlier this month, despite it having no balancing input from RUC officers who hunted down the Glennane gang.

It was a disturbing decision that raises major and urgent questions about RTE’s editorial judgement and impartiality.

Mr Flanagan’s intervention is hugely welcome, after a disastrous period for Anglo Irish relations, in which the Dublin establishment has been pushing a republican version of the past. London’s singularly weak response to this has been, by default, a betrayal of security forces who prevented civil war.

Like Michael McDowell, however, another former justice minister in the Republic, Mr Flanagan is a highly respected figure who has never shied from criticising terrorism.

Outside of this newspaper, there has been almost no questioning as to whether RTE had satisfied itself as to the source of funding of ‘Unquiet Graves’.

Mr Flanagan explained the need for transparency very well yesterday, when he said: “I was a solicitor before I entered politics. If somebody came into my office with a bag of money and said ‘I want to buy a house’ ... the issue would be the money and where the money came from.”

The questions on this for RTE to answer will not go away.

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