NL/694

Legal aid award upheld
Court rejects challenge that grant to Omagh families was biased
BY IVAN McMICHAEL

TWO defendants in the £14 million Omagh bomb compensation case lost a court action yesterday against the Lord Chancellor's decision to grant the claimants legal aid of £860,000.
Colm Murphy, from Dundalk, and Seamus Daly, from Culloville, Co Monaghan, alleged bias in the decision to approve exceptional expenditure to assist the families of the dead and injured to pursue their court action.
But Mr Justice Gillen in the High Court in Belfast dismissed a claim that legislation passed in 2005 approving such expenditure was "merely a cloak and a vehicle to meet the commitment to the Omagh families".
The judge said there was nothing improper or unlawful in the policy which enabled public funding to be made available and added: "I am completely satisfied that the commitment that Government ministers made to the Omagh families to provide funding for them was open, transparent and consistently made from 2003 onwards.
"I find nothing whatsoever objectionable about such a policy and indeed, had legislation been brought forward specifically to deal with funding for the Omagh families' civil action, I would have seen no immediate impediment to that."
Mr Justice Gillen said in his view Gerry Crossan, chief executive of the Legal Services Commission, had acted reasonably and fairly and dismissed implied allegations made against him in the course of the judicial review hearing.
He said: "I consider that such serious allegations should never have been made against Mr Crossan either directly or indirectly in the absence of some clear evidence to sustain them-and were based on the purest of speculation."
The others being sued in the record-breaking compensation case are Seamus McKenna, from Silverbridge, Co Armagh, Liam Campbell, from Dundalk, and Michael McKevitt, from Blackrock, Co Louth.
McKevitt, 57, is in jail in the Republic following his conviction as leader of the Real IRA which carried out the Omagh bombing in which 29 people were killed.
The compensation case has been provisionally fixed to start on September 24.