Garda-IRA collusion story illustrates the imbalance on legacy

Information on his trip got to the IRA.

As the DUP MP Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has observed: “This was indeed a serious leak of information when one considers that the IRA had murdered a previous British Ambassador in Dublin. Yet, the Irish government has completely failed to acknowledge this collusion let alone investigate it.”

It is the latest example of the imbalance over the legacy of the Troubles, in which republicans killed by far the most people, and used the Republic of Ireland as a safe haven.

The utter failure of the authorities to get tough with the terrorists meant that many people died, particularly targets of the IRA who lived in border areas. But not only was the Irish state woefully slack in its security approach south of the border, it refused over many years to extradite republicans.

This refusal, which seemed at the time to be sectarian and still does, continued after the Anglo Irish Agreement. Margaret Thatcher regretted the 1985 accord, when Irish disinterest in apprehending IRA murderers continued just as before.

Dublin not only shows not a flicker of remorse for its failures during decades of bloodshed here, it has repeatedly demanded more millions spent on one of the 3,000+ Troubles murders, that of Pat Finucane, demanding a public inquiry, and it has placed a number of legacy cases that it believes embarrass the UK state before the Council of Europe.

It is encouraging to hear Sir Jeffrey say the DUP will not agree a legacy process that does not examine of actions taken by the Irish authorities to investigate past crimes on their territory, not least over alleged Garda-IRA collusion.

This is only part of the radical reform needed on legacy. Another is mass UK funding for civil actions against IRA murderers who easily evaded criminal justice, given that – shamefully – security forces are being judged to the civil standard.