Doug Beattie: Ireland has ignored its role in the Troubles despite taking an outrageous legal action against the UK on legacy

It will start with opening statements by the Inquiry Chairman, The Rt Hon Lord Turnbull, who will lay out how he intends to conduct the inquiry, its investigations and its future hearings.

There will then be statements by legal representatives for the families of those murdered on August 15 1998 and the many who were injured. It is then possible a representative from the Irish government will make a statement giving an Irish commitment to cooperate fully with the inquiry. With that statement the Irish government will then, once again, slip away from calls to hold their own parallel inquiry into the terrible events of that day.

In all the arguments, positioning and disingenuous posturing on legacy over the years the Irish government have not taken their responsibilities on legacy seriously. They briefly flirted with examining the murky world of the conflict, and the Irish state’s role in it, with the Smithwick Tribunal. They didn’t like what they saw and beat a hasty retreat so that the light never shone on them again. They opposed the UK government’s Legacy Bill, which offered amnesties to perpetrators, but supported the Stormont House Agreement legacy mechanisms which would also see amnesties for perpetrators.

Their refusal to extradite terrorist suspects on the request of the UK government, 102 out of 110 extradition requests refused between 1973 and 1997, still leaves a sour taste. Their stance, post the 1998 Belfast Agreement, to stop investigating crimes linked to ‘The Troubles’ allowed the likes of former Priest Patrick Ryan to brazenly admit to his terrorist past. This is compounded by the fact that a request, by the UK government, to extradite Ryan in 1988 was also refused.

This failing on legacy by the Irish government; their navel gazing, selective memory and head in the sand approach is compounded by the outrageous inter-state case against the UK government while ignoring their own complicity.

For the Irish government to send an official to the Omagh Inquiry to say they will cooperate fully, while refusing to take responsibility for their part in ‘The Troubles’, will feel like nothing more than hollow words. Yet it will do something, it will open the door to many more questions the Irish government may not wish to answer.

What did their security services do between January 1998 when the Real IRA (RIRA) were using the Irish Republic as an operating base as they bombed Northern Irish towns and villages?

Around 20 RIRA explosive devices were either detonated or failed to explode in places like Banbridge, Portadown, Newry, Belleek and Moira between January and August 1998. This organisation, whose membership included the bleed off from PIRA, were well infiltrated by the Irish security services yet their attacks were never stopped at source. Both the Garda National Crime and Security Intelligence Service and the Irish Directorate of Military Intelligence knew the ‘who and the what’ in regard to RIRA but failed to take decisive action on the 'when and where'. Had they been stopped in early 1998, their leadership jailed, and their fledgling organisation decapitated, then the Omagh bombing may never have happened.

So was the peace process too important to arrest individuals linked to RIRA and stop this organisation dead in its tracks less it be viewed negatively by the main republican protagonists? We will never know unless the Irish government become more transparent, less secretive and hold their own public inquiry into the Omagh bombing and the circumstances that led to it.

Of course, the UK government security services will also be under scrutiny. If there was a failing, on the day of the Omagh bomb or the lead up to it, then the inquiry must find out why by focusing on the high-level structures and procedure, intelligence gathering and threat analysis.

What must never be forgotten is that the Omagh bomb was built, armed, protected and transported from the Irish republic to be detonated in Northern Ireland by RIRA. Blame ultimately lies with all those who perpetrated this atrocity. But the Irish government must be challenged on their lack of a genuine commitment to look at Omagh.

Why will they not hold their own public inquiry into the Omagh bombing, why did they not form their own legacy strategy mirroring the Stormont House Agreement they supported, why have they not allowed the light of truth to fall on their state agencies, why have their secrets remained secrets as they ask others to tell all?

If the Irish government are not willing to hold a full-blown statutory inquiry on Omagh in their own jurisdiction they could instead make their courts in Dublin available to Lord Turnbull. They could provide him with full compellability powers to bring those required to come before him for questioning and scrutiny.

The Irish representative at the Omagh Inquiry may well get away with a compassionate and understanding statements but it will not get away with failing to provide the truth. The much-used term UK-Ireland 'relationship reset' under Sir Keir Starmer and Taoiseach Simon Harris cannot be an excuse not to challenge when you believe something is fundamentally wrong.

Eventually the Irish government will have to stop hiding from their part in ‘The Troubles’. They must join the rest of us in accepting that nobodies' hands are clean, and the only side to be on is the side of the victims.

• Doug Beattie MC MLA is leader of the Ulster Unionist Party