Last Updated: 22/01/2008  20:35

AG decision on Ludlow inquiry due

The Attorney General will decide next month on possibly the last chance for a public inquiry into the unsolved 1976 murder of Dundalk forestry worker Seamus Ludlow.

Relatives of Mr Ludlow today held an hour-long meeting with the Taoiseach at Government Buildings and presented him with proposals for a concise independent probe into the killing.

The Attorney General is expected to make a decision on the issue within three weeks. Mr Ludlow, 47, who the Barron Report said had no links to paramilitary groups, was shot dead on May 2nd, 1976, as he returned home from a night out.

Mr Ludlow's nephew Jimmy Sharkey said tonight: "We asked the Taoiseach for an independent public inquiry which may take five or six months in duration.

"It would be tightly-focused and would offer value for money in terms of resources." The Ludlow family said it had been seeking a face-to-face meeting with the Taoiseach on the issue for more than ten years. Several relatives attended today's meeting as well as Co Louth Fianna Fail TD Seamus Kirk.

The Barron Report said the RUC told gardai in 1979 that it believed four named loyalists were involved in the Ludlow killing, but this information was not investigated by the Garda at the time.

Foreign Affairs Minister and local TD Dermot Ahern said tonight that the Ludlow family, which alleges a state cover-up in the 1976 murder, has been looking for answers for more than 30 years.

"One way of getting answers if they ever get answers was the meeting with the Taoiseach today," he said. "I spoke with the Taoiseach before and after the meeting. Anything that we do, from a realistic point of view, will be done.

"The family are rightly aggrieved because Seamus Ludlow was murdered and nobody was ever brought to justice for it."

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