Full investigation not the answer says Trimble

While Northern Ireland's nationalist population have begun to put pressure on the Government to introduce a full judicial inquiry into collusion following the Steven's Report, some remain sceptical that such an investigation would help.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble was among the first to publicly reject calls for a full investigation and instead claimed that the all-party Parliamentary Intelligence Committee, which sits in private, could examine what happened.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Mr Trimble said the last thing anyone wanted was "another full judicial inquiry when we see what is happening in terms of the time and money that has been expended elsewhere".

"Yes there has been investigation, a lot of that investigation necessarily has been kept as it were private. There are still paramilitary organisations in existence, there are still people, informants, in that.

"Are the SDLP suggesting that we should now bring all that into the open?

"Particularly when these organisations are still active and there is still a need to penetrate them in order to restrain their continuing illegal activities," he added.

DUP Policing spokesperson, Ian Paisley Jnr, also hit out at Sir John Steven's Report. He said: "It is time to draw a line under this matter. There was a war against terrorism being fought everyday in Northern Ireland. I have no doubt that mistakes have been made on the fringes of this war but to investigate allegations to a point of exhaustion and then investigate them some more when they cannot be proven is just pointless and stinks of cheap political point scoring."

However the most enduring comment of the day came from the family of one of the victims who is believed to have been killed as a result of collusion.

Ivy Lambert, mother of 19-year-old student, Adam Lambert, who was killed a day after the Enniskillen Poppy Day bombing, apparently as an act of revenge, has said she does not want an inquiry.

Commenting on the news coverage which has brought back vivid memories of her son's murder, she said: "It brings it all back but we sort of already knew what would come out and it doesn't bother us.

"We have always supported the police and the security forces and we don't see any reason to change that position now. I'm sure mistakes were made but it's not the police's fault, it's the people who shot him.

"We have moved on and got on with our lives, and that is what Adam would have wanted."

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