The inquiry into the Omagh bombing has been told “there must be something that could have been done” to prevent the atrocity.
Asked by the lead counsel to the inquiry, Paul Greaney, if it continued to be her view “that the Omagh bombing could have been prevented”, Northern Ireland’s first police ombudsman, Nuala O’Loan, replied that this was “now for the inquiry to decide”.
But she added that her understanding was that the Real IRA bombings which preceded the attack on Omagh “were individually investigated, there was no linking of them ... and I think if that had happened, it’s possible that the activities of the Real IRA at this stage could have been hindered very definitely”.
She added that, when taken together with mobile phone evidence, “it seems to me that there’s a very cogent argument for saying that there must be something that could have been done”.
A total of 31 people, including unborn twins, died and hundreds were injured when a car bomb planted by the dissident republican group the Real IRA exploded in the centre of Omagh on August 15th, 1998.
The public inquiry, which opened in 2024 under Alan Turnbull, is examining whether the atrocity could reasonably have been prevented by British state authorities.
Its third chapter, which opened in Belfast last month, is examining how the bombing was carried out and who was responsible.
On Wednesday, it heard evidence O’Loan launched an inquiry into the original RUC investigation into the Omagh bombing following a newspaper report in 2001.
The article, in the Sunday People, claimed undercover agent Kevin Fulton told his RUC handlers a car bomb was being prepared three days before the attack on Omagh.
O’Loan’s report found police received an anonymous telephone call on August 4th, 1998, which contained detailed information that an attack would be made in Omagh on the 15th, but it was not acted upon.
In her evidence to the inquiry, O’Loan outlined problems with the police’s co-operation with her investigation, describing it as “profoundly difficult ... we were trying to almost draw teeth in terms of getting information out of the police”.
She described difficulties with the provision of material, including intelligence material, by the RUC, and her “astonishment” that “in one case we haven’t even been told about this very significant document”.
The inquiry heard a copy of that document – an RUC review of its investigation into the Omagh bombing by chief superintendent Brian McVicker – was later personally delivered to O’Loan by the then chief constable, Ronnie Flanagan.
In her evidence, O’Loan described meeting Flanagan before the publication of her final report in December 2001, and “he, among other things, told me that I was going to destroy the peace process, that my office would never recover”.
“I said to him, ‘All you have to do, Ronnie, you have to admit there’s a problem with the Omagh bomb investigation, and really get it going and resourced, and you have to set up systems for the dissemination of intelligence,’” O’Loan said.
The former police ombudsman described it a “very unpleasant” meeting and she was “shocked” afterwards, and added Flanagan subsequently urged her not to publish the report.
Greaney also referred to attacks of a “personal nature” on O’Loan at that time, including comments made by the former Ulster Unionist MP Ken Maginnis on the BBC’s Newsnight on December 6th, 2001.
O’Loan described it as “a very serious attack, and I was called a suicide bomber, and it was said that I’d outlived my usefulness, which was dangerous.”
The inquiry continues.