10th July 2013
Thank you for coming here today. We wish to read a statement on behalf of the Dalton family.
Our daddy, Sean Dalton, died when an IRA booby trapped bomb exploded on 31st August 1988 in Kildrum Gardens in Creggan. Sheila Lewis was also killed instantly, and Gerard Curran died of his injuries 7 months later. Sheila and Gerard were my father’s friends and neighbours.
In 2005 we approached the Pat Finucane Centre and agreed to file a complaint with the Police Ombudsman. We were convinced that the RUC knew about the bomb in advance and had allowed our daddy and his friends to die.
There have been many false dawns since then.
We are clear about the following points:
We believe that the RUC allowed this to happen because they were protecting an informant. The Police Ombudsman says he found no evidence that Police acted to protect an informant. However, the Ombudsman was hindered in his investigation of this issue by the non co-operation of senior former officers both within the District Command and Special Branch. The report also states that documents and minutes of meetings were missing for reasons that have not been explained to this investigation.
It will be obvious to any reasonable person reading this report that there was an informer in the IRA in Derry providing on-going, reliable information to Special Branch - intelligence that Special Branch was passing on to the RUC District Command in Derry. We do not know whether this agent was being directed by Special Branch or the Security Service, MI5.
It is also obvious to any reasonable person that these three deaths could and should have been avoided had the RUC contacted a community representative or parish priest. This action would have protected the community and also protected the security forces. The RUC did not do this. They allowed the bomb to remain in situ, in the middle of a high-density block of maisonettes, for five days - putting lives at risk.
Whilst we are focusing on our daddy’s case, our thoughts today are with the families of Sheila Lewis and Gerard Curran. We also acknowledge that that terrible day had another tragic consequence; Gerry Laird, the occupant of the flat, took his own life some years later.
We accept the findings of this report. After 25 years of lies, deception and evasion, we finally feel vindicated. However we have no sense of jubilation. These finding are long overdue. We are sad that our brother Jim, who died two years ago, did not live to see this report.
We would like to thank all the staff of the Pat Finucane Centre, past and present, for their on-going support over the last nine years. We would also like to acknowledge the recent good work of the new Police Ombudsman and his team.