Chairman: Deputy Finian McGrath is sharing this time slot with Deputy Hoctor. If he wishes to interject at any time, he may do so.

Deputy Hoctor: What subsequent supports came the way of Mrs. Duffy-Campbell? Did the health board or the Government intervene? What statutory bodies intervened afterwards?

Mrs. Duffy-Campbell: I heard nothing. I might as well not have been widowed at all. I heard nothing until I got the courage and the strength to join Justice for the Forgotten. Jack Lynch, the Taoiseach at the time, came and offered his sympathy. However, that is as far as it went. Nobody came to my door to offer me assistance or counselling, to ask me to talk about it or to inquire how they could help. A sum of money was given out at the time but that was the extent of the help I received. Otherwise, I had to live with it - I had to bury it in my head and my heart, rear my children and just put it behind me until such time as it could no longer remain hidden and had to come out. I received no help.

Deputy Hoctor: We are grateful that Tom and Paddy are with Mrs. Duffy-Campbell today. How is Mrs. Duffy-Campbell’s daughter?

Mrs. Duffy-Campbell: She is fine but she is unable to talk about it at all. She will not discuss it.

Deputy F. McGrath: I welcome Mrs. Monica Duffy-Campbell and Tom and Paddy Duffy and thank them for their submission. Before posing some questions, I express my sympathy to the family on the death of Tommy. They lost a father, a husband and a brother. This was a sad tragedy for them.

We are in the midst of a peace process, of which truth, reconciliation and justice are essential elements and of which it is important that the evidence our guests are providing this morning should form part. I wish them well in that regard. If there are any questions we ask which relate to matters which are too sensitive, they should feel free not to respond.

I feel strongly about some of the comments made by Cormac Ó Dúlacháin, particularly in respect of the fact that all of the victims must be involved in this process. We had 30 years of violence on this island and all the victims of that violence must be heard and accommodated. However, I am also of the opinion that there can never be a hierarchy of victims. All victims should be treated with respect and dignity and treated equally. I would like to see this form part of the process. I wish to ensure the voices of the families and the victims - citizens of the State and people from outside - are heard at these proceedings relating to the bombings in Dublin in 1972 and 1973. As an Independent Deputy, I assure our guests that they have my full support, sympathy and understanding. Above all, they can rely on my making a 100% effort to try to get truth and justice for the families of the victims of the bombings.

My first question relates to the reaction at the time. Will Mrs. Duffy-Campbell indicate how the extended family and the broader public reacted to the bombings in Dublin?

Mrs. Duffy-Campbell: I am not able to say how the broader public reacted at the time.

Deputy F. McGrath: What about neighbours and the extended family?

Mrs. Duffy-Campbell: Neighbours, in so far as they could help, would offer to babysit, etc. We lived in an era in which nobody wanted to talk about this. My family wanted me to put it behind me very quickly. My father-in-law never spoke about it and was not even about to attend the funeral. He never spoke about it from the day Tom, his eldest son, died. People were not able to talk about it and were never given any help to allow them to do so. It is a pity it did not happen at the time. I am glad it has happened now for which I am grateful. We carried it for a long time on our own.

Deputy F. McGrath: Who did Mrs. Duffy-Campbell think was responsible for the bombings at the time?

Mrs. Duffy-Campbell: I was not able to think. I put it to the back of my mind because it was too awful for me to think about it. I just knew he had died in that horrible way. I was not politically minded. I was 22 years of age. One does not think politically at that age or talk politics.

As regards what was happening in the North at the time which was awful, like everybody else in the South one hoped it would not come one’s way and that the problems would remain on the other side of the Border. When it came my way, I was not able to cope with it and closed it off. I had no choice. I was expecting a baby for which I needed to care when it was born and for my little girl who had been left without her dad. I could not afford to allow myself to think about this too much. I needed to be there for them.

Deputy F. McGrath: It was basically a case of survival for Mrs. Duffy-Campbell and her family in the initial stages.

Mrs. Duffy-Campbell: Yes.

Deputy F. McGrath: I wish to deal with the broader political issues and address my subsequent remarks to Mrs. Duffy-Campbell and to Tom and Paddy Duffy. I refer to the broader political issues. Allegations of collusion were made in the Barron report. Does Ms Duffy-Campbell have a view on these allegations? Does she believe the British security forces were involved in the Dublin bombings?

Mrs. Duffy-Campbell: I believe there was collusion. I know this is not nice but I believe in some way the Irish Government in its own way has been involved in the collusion, in the way that they have never sought the truth about these bombings until now. They have never done anything. They were happy to hide it and they were happy to keep it under the carpet. They did not want to look into it. Maybe they did not want to fall out with the British Government. Whatever their fear was, I do not know but, in that way, I feel that both Governments colluded in it.

Deputy F. McGrath: Does Ms Duffy-Campbell feel successive Governments lacked the political will to seek the truth?

Mrs. Duffy-Campbell: Maybe they just did not want to open a can of worms. I do not know. Certainly the Government at the time did not want to.

Deputy F. McGrath: Mr. Duffy was involved in an art project, a sculpture in memory of the Dublin bombings. Will he explain its significance to the committee and its importance to himself and other victims?

Mr. T. Duffy: Last July we placed a sculpture on the path at Sackville Place as a memorial to the three men who were killed. I am a professional sculptor. Initially, I will speak in terms of how I relate to it. I talked earlier about this veil of secrecy among our family and this inability to talk about and share the events that killed my dad, in particular. I grew up with a massive void. My father was not there but there were also questions that were unanswerable and a certain void about my father, my history, where I came from and what led me to this point. I had no way of articulating that because of our inability to talk. I had no way to have any sort of relationship with my father or his memory that was not tied to the event that took his life.

In managing to make a sculpture, which is a particularly personal thing to me anyway, and turn my skills and God given gifts to make something concrete and have a concrete relationship with the memory of my father, it was a massive step for me personally in that it lent a certain weight of legitimacy to my father and the events that killed him. There was something definite there rather than a quiet word said in a quiet corner about how good your dad was and how he was a lovely man. I was not trying to relate to my father through other people’s memories. I have created a direct link to something significant. The sculpture was as much about the celebration of the men’s lives as it was about the event that took their lives and that was important.

In terms of making the sculpture, I feel as much as anything I was a facilitator for all of the family members in that we all wanted something definite, a place we could go to where there was a definite mark and something solid where we could meet and that it was not obviously ephemeral. It was not talk, discussions, meetings and phone calls and there was somewhere definite we could go and relate to these men.

Every year in or around 1 December, we place wreaths on Sackville Place as a memorial and we generally have a service. I was struck one day how within a couple of days those wreaths were gone and the memory was gone from that street. I wanted to do something that was personal to the families so that when they went, there was a definite mark there and those people had not been erased from history. The families did not talk about a definite format that the sculpture would take; we talked more about the emotions we wanted to impart and the memories we wanted to leave. Subsequently, once it was decided that I would go ahead and make it - I am truly grateful that the families allowed me to do it and I take great pride in it - the families were involved every step of the way and we now have something. While it is a public statement in that it is a piece of art in public, it is also a personal statement. There are personal resonances for us and we can relate directly to it. That event has been particularly significant for me in moving forward and getting on with my own healing.

Deputy F. McGrath: The last paragraph of the conclusions on page 99 of the Barron report states: “Confidential information by Gardaí suggested that responsibility lay with the UVF but no evidence was found to confirm this”. Does the family agree a more in-depth investigation is needed with broader terms of reference and compellability?

Mr. P. Duffy: I believe we need full co-operation from the British Government, including the UVF. It has been very obvious that they are hiding away from something. If you do not answer a question or do not co-operate for 30 years, there is obviously some reason. The Deputy asked earlier what was the feeling at the time of the explosions about who committed them. I still have the clippings of the newspapers of the time. One of the headlines says the IRA was responsible for this atrocity. That is a heading in a newspaper but I believe it is a lot more than that.

Deputy F. McGrath: What would the family like to see happen next both in terms of the committee’s work and the broader political context? What would it like the Taoiseach or the Minister for Foreign Affairs to do next in the political arena to assist the campaign for truth and justice for the families?

Mr. P. Duffy: They need to seek full co-operation through whatever means from the British Government, which has not been forthcoming.

Chairman: I thank the Duffy family for appearing before the sub-committee. It has not been easy and I hope it has been helpful because it has been helpful to the sub-committee.

I welcome the Bradshaw family, which is represented by Lynn Cummins, a daughter of George Bradshaw, Ms Anna Bradshaw-Cooke, his sister, Mr. Pat Bradshaw, his brother, Ms Angela Connery, his sister, and Ms Rose Bradshaw-Brett, his sister. I invite them to make a contribution, which will be followed by questions from Deputies Costello and O’Fearghaíl to further our knowledge of the events.

Ms Lynn Cummins: I did not know my father. I was three and a half when daddy was killed. Over the years a lot of people have told me about him and I wrote down some of the words before coming here today. He was very jolly, good fun, a great dancer, outgoing, a very decent man, a teetotaller - you would never think it if you met him out - and he had a great sense of humour. Mammy and daddy had been married five years when he was killed. They were still very much in love, full of dreams, plans and hopes for the future.

Daddy was not supposed to be working that night. He was covering a colleague’s shift and was, unfortunately, in the wrong place at the wrong time. That he had been working for somebody else never upset me when I was growing up. However, I did wonder why he had not run the other way; life would have been so different. Mammy heard the bombing and waited for daddy to come home. Later, the gardaí called and mammy was never the same. She told me that for the first month it was a blur with people such as the clergy, bishops, neighbours and the Taoiseach, who said he would look after her, calling. She recalled him driving away with the promise of doing great things.

During that time somebody also called to my nanny - I am not sure whether it was when she was in Belfast or in Dublin - with a clear message that said: “It wasn’t us.” I do not know if that message was given to her in a note. As far as we were concerned it was a message from the IRA saying it had nothing to do with the bombing. That message came either by note or was said to my grandmother.

The funeral passed off and we returned to Dublin. My nanny and aunt Betty came to the House to take care of us. Mammy was in bed for much of the time. She could not believe what had happened. She described herself as being catatonic during those first few weeks. She told me that after about four weeks I said to her, “Get up”, in a way that only a child can while not understanding what was happening. I wondered where my daddy had gone and why my mammy was so sad although I was delighted my nanny was staying with us. Mammy always said we lost a mother and father the day daddy was killed. It took me a long time to understand that. She said she was not able to be the mother she wanted to be. It was only in later life I could fully understand what she meant.

We sold the House in Dublin and moved to Fethard, where daddy was from, for a little while. We then moved to Belfast where my grandmother lived. My mother is from Belfast. It always struck us as ironic that while in Belfast in the 1970s we felt safe. We felt safe there because the bad thing had happened in Dublin where it was supposed to be peaceful.

Mammy went back to work but we were all the time watching her and being told not to upset her. It was like walking on eggshells, she was broken. When people said that I would say: “God, we haven’t done anything; we’re small children, we haven’t done anything wrong but mammy is so upset.” Mammy did seem to take to the bed a lot of the time because she was so distraught and out of her mind. She would go off for a drive in the car but, in fairness to her, she never went off without asking my nanny to take care of us because we were so small. She did not go out and never had another boyfriend. For mammy to remarry was totally out of the question. She was broken and no one could, in her mind, compare with daddy. He truly was the love of her life; she was so delighted to have met him and felt she would be comparing the two and that would be wrong. One can understand that.

Mammy went back to work. She did midwifery and worked in the Mater Hospital. She also lectured in the College of Business Studies. Life was quite good. As Tom said, we were children and although life was somewhat normal we knew there was something wrong. I watched television a great deal of the time and I firmly believed all daddies were like Charles Ingles from the "Little House on the Prairie". To my mind my daddy would have been like Charles Ingles. I really believed that.

Mammy was always at her happiest sitting in her armchair, drinking coffee, smoking and dropping the ashes where they fell. The coffee table beside was always full of books on gardening, nursing or alternative health. She was one of the most intelligent women I ever met, something which many people commented on. I use the term “was” because my mother is not well now. She has had a brain tumour for a number of years and that has affected her intelligence. If anything, the brain tumour has given her peace because it has taken away the awful upset she had for years. She is in a nursing home now. Mammy is still alive but her personality has changed.

We then left Belfast and returned to Fethard. We left Belfast because mammy received a phone call one night telling her to be careful or the same thing that happened to her husband would happen to her. We reported the call to the police who took it seriously because she was a widow of 30 years with two small children and there were not many single people with families in Belfast at the time. We were not involved in anything. It was clear mammy was a nurse going about her business and raising her children. Mammy did not believe the call was a prank and it set her back a great deal. We then moved back to Fethard with nanny a week before Christmas. That is where we are at today.

What upsets me the most is that mammy’s life was also taken. She was so upset. It was a blackhole for me. I did not know George Bradshaw so I did not miss him but I missed knowing what it was like to have a daddy. I would have loved to have known what it was like to have a daddy. There was something missing in our house. Mammy did the very best she could and I am grateful to her for that.

I have spent 30 years or more dealing with the effects of this bombing. The loss and sadness never goes away. When something like this comes up, it brings it all back. I am grateful that at last somebody is listening to us. Before, we could not and did not speak about it. We did not talk about it even though we had done nothing wrong. I am grateful for this opportunity. Thank you.

Chairman: I thank Lynn for her moving contribution. It is clear you have suffered over the years.

Ms Anna Bradshaw-Cooke: George was one of 13 children. We lived in Fethard and had great times growing up together. While we never spoke outside about George, he was talked about morning, noon and night at home with mammy and the rest of us. Our father died the same year and mammy was so upset she could not go to George’s funeral; she just could not stand. There were 13 children in the family and we miss George and wonder why he died. We come here today seeking some answers. We would like to know why this happened. George was in the canteen and went to Sackville Place where he was hit with the full force of the bomb. While other people get to see the body of their loved ones, we never saw George again.

When my oldest brother, my husband and I went to Dublin to identify him, we were not allowed in. We did not fully realise at the time what had happened. However, we were stopped at the gate of the morgue and turned back. It was only when we sat in the Garda car afterwards at Lynn’s mother's house in Sutton - Lynn is our niece - that we fully realised how bad things were. The main thing in our mind then, apart from Kathleen at home in Sutton, was how mammy was and what we would say to her when we went home. Today happens to be our father’s anniversary. To cut a long story short, when we went home mammy was sitting at the fire. All the rest of our sisters and brothers were there. We are a family of eight sisters and four brothers and George. Mammy looked at us and asked: “What was he like?” We looked at each other. We decided we had better say what we had planned coming home in the car. We said: “He was all scratched and bruised, but he was himself.” That satisfied her for the moment and made it just a bit better for her. Mammy was a young woman, only 56 at the time. In all the years it has affected every one of us, each in our own way. I might feel it one way and my brother or sister will feel it another way.

After that mammy never wanted to be on her own and any time we went any place she was worried and warned us to be sure to do this or that and be careful. I suppose George had only left home - we call Fethard home - a year and ten months. He had spent the November in Fethard. He was George the happy-go-lucky, jolly fellow with all the chat and jokes from Dublin. We were delighted to see him and that was always the case, but down through the years since, we felt we were on our own.

When we began to grow up and have our own families George was always talked about. We would ask why it happened and who was there for us. We always blamed the Bill that was being introduced in the Dáil and felt that was the reason it happened. It always annoyed us that down through the years and all our lives, for 32 years after the bombing, Jack Lynch’s Government and successive Governments through the years never bothered or did anything about it. They swept the issue under the carpet all these years.

The committee should ask itself where do people like us go for justice. I remember one day when we went and met Judge Barron when we had joined with Justice for the Forgotten. He asked why it took us so long to go about it. We looked at each other and asked what we were supposed to do, who was there to help us or where would we go. We had no help from anybody - nothing. At this stage we would love answers. We want justice. We want to know why. We want to know why a young married man with children, who was a son, a brother and a husband, was killed. As our brother in a family of 13 children, the members of the sub-committee can imagine the loss to us.

Chairman: Thank you. There is certainly a vacuum in your life after George.

Mr. Pat Bradshaw: I wonder why Governments did nothing about it down through the years. After all, George was a taxpayer, the same as anybody else. He did no harm to anybody. He worked his way up from being an ordinary labourer to a job on the buses in Dublin in an effort to better himself. However, it all ended very fast for him. I wonder whether the situation would have been allowed to go on for 32 years if it had been the brother, sister, father or mother of one of the political people in power at the time. I doubt it very much. It is very annoying to be still here today trying to air and find out the truth.

Chairman: Thank you.

Ms Angela Connery: I can only follow on with what Anna, Pat and Lynn have said because we all feel the same. It is hurtful. Today being the day it is, it is difficult. I would love to say more, but I am not able to.

Chairman: Thank you, Angela. Perhaps you will have something to add later.

Ms Rose Bradshaw-Brett: I never say anything about George because when I think of him, I feel so sad that I can hardly mention his name. He was so young and had such a droll sense of humour. He was a fun-loving person who hated injustice to any human being, no matter who they were. He knew very little about politics or how it works, just as I too know little about it or how it works.

We all suffered. Daddy died in January and then George was murdered on 1 December 1972. George was a great comfort to my mother each time he visited during that year when daddy died. She had it hard enough with 13 of us without George being murdered on 1 December 1972.

Around 8 p.m. every Friday it is always Friday, 1 December. If his anniversary falls on a Wednesday, it does not matter to me; it is always Friday, 1 December 1972. I have had counselling over the years to try to deal with George being taken from us. I have been told by counsellors time and again that there is light at the end of the tunnel. It is a hell of a long tunnel if it takes 32 years to see the light at the end of it. That is all I have to say about it.

Chairman: Thank you Rose. I now invite Deputies Costello and Ó Feargháil to join in dialogue with the Bradshaw family.

Deputy Costello: I thank Lynn, Anna, Pat, Angela and Rose for their moving testimony. We appreciate their courage in coming before the committee after all these years to talk to us in such an open manner. It is sad that it has taken over 30 years and that we have had to move into another century before Parliament or the State has been able to find a forum to provide them with the opportunity to make their statements. I am sorry they have not been able to do it until now.

It must be painful and traumatic for the family in the absence of answers to articulate the experience of those years. To some extent we are here to give the family the opportunity of saying what they have to say. We are looking at all the forgotten of the 1970s who were victims of atrocities. We produced a first report last year, are conducting a second one now and will have a further one later. We hope the Bradshaw family will be able to give us some assistance on the way forward and how we can provide solutions to the problems that have existed for so long.

My first question relates to the statement Lynn made and reiterated by the others that the Taoiseach said he would do great things but that very little happened and, as Anna said, nobody was there to help. Can the family tell us what exactly it was like for them with their mother raising 13 children? What was it like for mother, brothers, sisters and daughter? Please elaborate a little more on the experience.

Ms Bradshaw-Cooke: About our family?

Deputy Costello: Yes.

Ms Bradshaw-Cooke: I suppose at that stage the youngest in our family was 14 and then up along the line to the oldest. It was very hard. We lived so happy together, we had a very happy childhood, running the fields and all different things. We just could not believe what happened. We just could not believe we would never see him again. If he had died like daddy did, which is what we used to say, if he had even died like daddy had died, at least we would see him and say our goodbyes, but we just never saw him again and I think that was very hurtful through the years. This day I suppose when we talk about it, we can see him as he was, as a young man.

I did a piece for the The Nationalist and Munster Advertiser a while ago and when people in Fethard saw the photograph of George, they said it brought back memories to them. They had not forgotten him but when they saw the photograph it put a face back on the fella that they knew, going to dances and going here and there and even living his married life and coming back to Fethard to visit them. He came back every six weeks, he came back as much as he could but it was only a year and ten months before he was gone. That gave us a big shock as well, that he was so little time gone. Even though he lived on the green in Fethard with Kathleen and Lynn at that time and then Rory was born in Dublin afterwards, we still called that “home”, we still called that Fethard. There are so many of us married in Fethard, eight of us are married in Fethard. As mammy used to say when we were growing up - my Daddy would come in and say, “Where are the lads?”, she would say, “They are all out playing just like Brown’s cows”. We were really a happy-go-lucky family but that definitely did something to every one of us. From the day it happened it was not the same, it was never the same again in our house.

Deputy Costello: What sort of contact was there between the State and State agencies with the family or any members of the family from that time?

Ms Bradshaw-Cooke: There was nothing, we did not see anybody at all. I would say not even TDs called to see mammy, or even councillors. The neighbours were great and we are a very long-tailed family. Mammy was not short of visitors but not a sinner ever, ever called to Drumdeel to us as we were growing up, nobody.

Deputy Costello: Nobody offered counselling or any support?

Ms Bradshaw-Cooke: Nobody.

Ms Cummins: It was a different time then. Now we are so open to try new things. It was the start of the Troubles, people were in shock. I do not know whether services like that were available at the time. As they became available, was it felt that it was so long ago and they may have just got on with things but we didn’t. It is 30 years on and you can see the hurt in everybody here.

Ms Bradshaw-Cooke: I was asked one time would I like to go for counselling. I just looked at the person who asked me and I just said, “What do you want me to do, go back and cry for ten years more by bringing all that out again?”, because that is what happened. We would go down to mammy and she would be so sad. Every one of us were so sad. Apart from asking about counselling, I do not think even at this stage. I never had counselling, I do not want counselling. I do not want to go back and make myself just more miserable than I am. I come up here and say something but I am not in the habit of being in these circumstances and I say, “God, what is all this about?” If we had just got answers years ago. Maybe if they had looked into the 1972 and 1973 bombings, the 1974 bombings might never have happened. I cannot understand why they did not just look. At that particular time, as Lynn mentioned, Jack Lynch went out to Kathleen’s house and he shook hands. What good is that? He turned his back, swept it under the carpet like successive Governments did down all through the years. They just do not want to know about it.