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The public inquiry into the 1998 Omagh bombing—the deadliest single attack of the Troubles—opened a new phase of hearings in Belfast on February 19, 2026, with lawyers examining whether two dissident republican factions, the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA, carried out the massacre as a "joint enterprise." Lead counsel Paul Greaney KC outlined a working hypothesis that both groups planned the attack together, describing those involved as experienced terrorists determined to evade capture.
The hearings, delayed by about six months, are the latest stage of an inquiry established by the previous UK government and chaired by Lord Turnbull. Its mandate is to determine whether British authorities could have prevented the bombing. This phase focuses on the days surrounding the attack—both before and after—and on the question of who organized it and how.
The bombing took place on August 15, 1998, in Omagh, County Tyrone, when a car bomb exploded on a crowded shopping street. It killed 29 people, including a woman pregnant with twins, and wounded more than 200 others. The attack came barely four months after the Good Friday Agreement, the peace deal that ended most of the Troubles; the dissident republicans behind the bombing rejected that agreement and sought to wreck it with violence.
Greaney said claims of responsibility delivered to RTÉ and the Irish News in the days after the attack were consistent with Real IRA involvement. But, he cautioned, "that is the start, not the end" of the inquiry's work.
The legal team has been scrutinizing intelligence gathered by David Rupert, an American who penetrated the Real IRA as an informant for the FBI and Britain's MI5. After the attack, Rupert reported that it was a "joint operation" involving a second organization, the Continuity IRA. Greaney said the source of that information was Michael McKevitt, the Real IRA leader later found civilly liable for the bombing.
That civil finding came in a landmark 2009 High Court judgment in Belfast, which also held Colm Murphy, Seamus Daly, and Liam Campbell liable for the attack. To date, no one has been convicted in a criminal court for the Omagh bombing, making that civil case the only legal accountability families have secured in nearly three decades.
Greaney set out the "working hypothesis" to be examined in detail in Chapter Three of the inquiry's work: at an organizational level, both the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA planned and carried out the bombing. He stressed that the theory must be tested against the evidence. A key part of that test will be telecommunications—how suspects used mobile phones in the days before the attack is expected to be a significant line of inquiry.
"Joint enterprise" is a term with specific meaning in British criminal law, where it underpins collective liability for a crime. The inquiry is applying the concept more broadly, asking whether two organizations, often treated as rivals, collaborated closely enough to be considered co-planners of the massacre.
The mechanics of the plot, as outlined so far, point to careful preparation. By August 12, 1998, a plan was in place to steal a car to carry the bomb, and a Vauxhall Cavalier had been identified as the preferred vehicle. In the early hours of August 13, a Cavalier was stolen from Carrickmacross, County Monaghan, "effectively to order." Witness evidence suggests three other Cavaliers on the same street or nearby were tampered with that same night, indicating the group took precautions to ensure the theft went smoothly.
The car was taken to Dundalk, a border town the inquiry team has identified as the home base for many key figures. It was then handed to Seamus Daly—another civilly liable defendant—"ready to be loaded with a bomb," according to Greaney.
The barrister also focused on Colm Murphy, who died in 2023. "The evidence suggests that Colm Murphy sat like a spider at the centre of the web of the plan to detonate a bomb in Omagh," he told the hearing.
Fake license plates, known as "cloned" plates, were quickly fitted to the stolen car. Greaney described this as standard dissident republican tradecraft in the late 1990s: stolen cars carrying bombs were routinely given cloned plates so police checks would not immediately reveal their stolen status. "Those transporting bombs would wish to attract as little attention as possible," he said.
The inquiry heard there were sound reasons to believe Daly was in a scout car that led the bomb convoy into Omagh on August 15, while the late Séamus McKenna was in the vehicle carrying the device. The scout car offered the bombers a faster escape route once the bomb was parked.
Greaney painted those involved as seasoned operators. The dissident republicans behind the attack had been waging a violent campaign for months before Omagh. "They were experienced terrorists, and they were motivated by a desire not to be caught," he said.
Later this week, the inquiry expects to hear a pre-recorded statement from a senior Garda officer about the theft of the Vauxhall Cavalier—an indication of cross-border cooperation that families say has been slow to materialize.
Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was killed in the attack, said the hearings are essential even when the evidence is difficult. "It is important that we do get into the nitty gritty of what happened in the lead-up to Omagh, particularly in the last few days," he said. "This was a cross-border crime and most of the evidential opportunities lie within the Republic. We just hope in the end we will get truth and dignity out of this process."
Claire Hayes, whose brother Alan Radford died in the bombing, echoed that. "This chapter is a pivotal point in the inquiry process," she said. "We are now 28 years past the bomb and there has been very little engagement from the south of Ireland. I want them to pass on all the knowledge they have."
If the inquiry ultimately finds that the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA acted in concert, the conclusion would reshape the historical record of the worst atrocity of the Troubles. It would also give families the fullest account yet of how a plot that killed 29 people on a summer Saturday afternoon in a quiet market town slipped past the security services of two states—and whether it could have been stopped.
