The following letter was sent to the Irish News and the Irish Times letters pages following coverage in both papers of Chief Constable Hugh Orde's statements slating public inquiry and attacking "money sucking lawyers". Neither of the papers saw fit to create space for this letter.
A Chara,
The Chief Constable's intervention this week on the matter of public inquiry was as crass as it was inappropriate.
Mr Orde played a key role with Mr John Stevens in investigating the policy of the collusion and the murder of human rights lawyer Patrick Finucane. How much did these fourteen years of extraordinary "inquiry" cost the public purse? How much was he personally paid for this? All of this for the net result to be negligible disclosure, prevarication on prosecution and the families' stated need for public inquiry only to be further confirmed.
Families denied transparent investigation and in possession of evidence of state cover-up are entitled to redress and recourse and act in the public interest by demanding transparent inquiry. The cost of inquiries would be negligible if evidence were not routinely destroyed and the state did not act to hide from full and public disclosure its activities.
Indeed the very need for public inquiries could be removed if these matters were addressed as part of an independent transitional process of truth recovery for all victims.
It does not serve victims' interests nor indeed the public interest for Mr Orde to make these ventures into matters beyond his remit. What he does have jurisdiction over are the Steven's Reports and whether or not they are published. Full publication of all three Steven's reports would go a long way towards removing the cost of inquiry into state collusion.
Is Mise le Meas
Andrée Murphy
