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Green light for case by Omagh victims
IVAN MCMICHAEL

The £14 million Omagh bomb compensation case yesterday got the green light to proceed after the Appeal Court in Belfast dismissed an application to take it to the House of Lords.
Lawyers for two of the five defendants - Colm Murphy and Seamus Daly - wanted to challenge last month's ruling that the London firm of solicitors acting for the victims' families had not significantly breached court rules.
It had been argued that the firm, H20, did not have a business address in Northern Ireland and was merely represented by a Belfast firm of solicitors which agreed to accept service of court papers but declined to act as agents for security reasons.
The Lord Chief Justice, Sir Brian Kerr, described the point as technical and ruled the court had the discretion to allow the proceedings to go ahead.
In court yesterday a lawyer for Mr Murphy and Mr Daly applied for leave to appeal to the House of Lords.
But Sir Brian, sitting with Lord Justice Sheil, told the lawyer: "You may be aggrieved at the decision we took but it does not constitute a point of law of general public importance and the application is refused."
Two outstanding matters have to be resolved before a date can be fixed for the compensation hearing.
Parliament has still to approve an amendment to legislation to permit fresh legal aid to be made available to the families to fund their court claim and a decision is still awaited in the appeal by Michael McKevitt, another of the five defendants, against his conviction and 20-year sentence for directing the Real IRA which carried out the Omagh bombing that killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins.