Editorial: New legacy law over sworn testimonies by Irish police is part of UK's feeble deal with Ireland

A law allowing Irish police to give sworn testimonies to the Omagh Bombing Inquiry has come into effect in the Republic of Ireland.

​The country’s justice minister said that the “bespoke” law allows for sworn testimony to be given by current or former members of the Gardai and the Irish army, as well as departmental officials or ministers, to the inquiry – in Northern Ireland – that is examining the 1998 atrocity in the Co Tyrone town.

The Republic’s Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan signed the commencement order for the International Co-operation (Omagh Bombing Inquiry) Act 2026 on June 12. It means that from Monday, the inquiry chairman can request assistance in the form of sworn oral testimony from An Garda Siochana and to request that other relevant state bodies be designated for the purposes of receiving such requests.

This development is worthwhile but it is such a minor contribution to the legacy of the Troubles – the process of investigating the past, which was marked above all by long years republican terrorism of the variety that murdered 29 civilians that day, including a woman pregnant with twins – as to be an insult.

Ireland has been allowed by successive UK governments, and indeed by Northern Ireland politicians, to evade its central responsibility for the years of violence, including its role in the formation of the IRA, incidents of collusion with republican terrorists and – worst of all – its half-hearted response to the Provisional murder machine. Many people on the border died because the Irish authorities refused to extradite serial murderers.

Ireland is suing the UK at Strasbourg for a shelved amnesty when it gives the IRA an amnesty. And yet the chronically weak Keir Starmer has refused to hit back, and instead struck a deal that resulted in feeble Irish commitments such as this new law.