Speaking to the media outside Leinster House, Deputy Ó Caoláin said:
“There is growing public awareness of the extent of British state collusion with loyalist paramilitaries that took place over many years, not only resulting in atrocities in the north of our country, but that presented also in this state.
“This manifested in a series of very terrible events that took the lives of many innocent people, not only in this city but in my home town of Monaghan and various other border towns.
“It is an indisputable fact that there were integral relationships between loyalist paramilitaries and British state representatives, going right up to the highest echelons of British political life, to the British government itself.
“The so-called British security forces were not only providers of weaponry, providers of information in relation to republican activists and innocent nationalist and Catholic members of different communities, providers of safe passage for the carrying out of these atrocities and participants in the subsequent cover-ups, they were actual participants in murder after murder and that has now been quite clearly and publically acknowledged.
“It is vital now that the Taoiseach and this government take up the gauntlet and to fearlessly put forward the case on behalf of the Irish people.
“The Taoiseach must impress upon his British government counterpart the importance of both governments co-sponsoring a full and independent, international inquiry into collusion to expose its full extent and to assist the survivors and bereaved in their search for truth, for justice and for some degree of closure.
“The information is clearly there under the control of the British government – they need to open up these files, they need to expose the full facts.
“All information on direct involvement by the so-called British security services must be finally brought out into full public scrutiny.
“If the British Government fail to live up to their responsibilities then the Irish Government must act unilaterally and establish an international independent inquiry, seeking the support of other states for British co-operation and compliance with the inquiry’s demands.”