Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill has spoken publicly for the first time since a coroner ruled that the IRA had been responsible for the murder of ten Protestant workmen in a sectarian attack in 1976.
Their work van was stopped on the way home from a factory in south Armagh on a January evening by a 12-strong unit of masked man at Kingsmill, near Bessbrook.
The only Catholic was singled out and told to run and his colleagues were lined up and cut down.
A fictitious organisation claimed responsibility for the attack, but it was always believed to have been the work of the IRA which was supposedly on ceasefire at the time.
Last week a coroner said the IRA had carried out the Kingsmill Massacre and criticised the republican movement for not engaging with the inquest process.
Five Catholic men from two different families had been shot dead by loyalists in separate attacks the previous evening. A sixth died later.
The coroner said while the Kingsmill attack was presented as a reprisal it had in fact been some time in the planning.
Michelle O’Neill was asked today whether the IRA should have been more honest about its involvement and whether she now wished to apologise on behalf of the wider republican movement.
She said the Kingsmills inquest findings had come during a week of difficult legacy announcements.
“Let me again be categorical, I am sorry for every loss of life during the conflict,” she said.
“But my job as leader of today is to build towards the future, trying to help heal the wounds of the past.
“And doesn’t the Kingsmill judgement very much underline why we need to deal with the past properly and why the legislation the British Government has brought forward is driving a coach and horses through the desires, wishes and needs of all families and that includes the Kingsmill families, who deserve truth and justice, who deserve a public inquiry who deserve answers.
“But for my job, as a leader of today, I speak for Sinn Féin, I speak as First Minister in front of you today. I am sorry for every loss of life including those in the Kingsmills disaster.”
