Scale of Republican collusion still needs to be realised – Cahill

The shocking news in today’s Irish News by Security Correspondent Allison Morris shines a light into a murky web of collusion between high ranking IRA personnel and British intelligence services.

My thoughts are with the families of the Shankill bomb victims today. These families are entitled to the fullest disclosure of the truth from the Republican movement.

Classified documents stolen by the IRA during the 2001 break-in in Castlereagh show that the Provisional IRA commander in Ardoyne was working as an informer. More disturbing is the fact that the republican movement has known this for 15 years, have watched these families grieve, and have never once sought to ease their suffering by disclosing the truth of these murders.

It should be noted that at a time when republicans were highlighting the murky world of loyalist collusion, they sought to conceal the truth of their own.

It is very concerning that British intelligence services, at the very least, turned a blind eye to both loyalist and republican operators who were allowed to quite literally get away with murder. It is inconceivable that the Sinn Féin leadership were not informed of this very murky situation. Their public calls for a truth recovery process are nothing but a sham when it is demonstrable that they have sought to conceal the truth in a number of cases.

It begs the question, if this man’s role was concealed by the republican movement, who else are they protecting?