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BELFAST — Aug. 15, 2026 — The public inquiry into the 1998 Omagh bombing entered a decisive new phase this week, with lead counsel formally advancing a "working hypothesis" that two dissident republican factions planned and carried out the attack together.
Paul Greaney KC told a fresh round of evidentiary hearings in Belfast that investigators are examining whether the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA jointly organized the car bombing that killed 29 people in the County Tyrone town. He described the operation as the work of "experienced terrorists" whose primary concern was avoiding detection.
The hearings — delayed by six months — are now concentrated on the period immediately before and after the explosion: the theft of the car used for the bomb, the movement of the device, the mobile phone traffic that linked the plotters, and the calls claiming responsibility that followed.
The bombing on Aug. 15, 1998, a busy Saturday in the market town of Omagh, was the deadliest single atrocity of the Troubles. Among the dead was a woman pregnant with twins. The attack happened barely four months after the Good Friday Agreement, and it was aimed at wrecking a peace process that had raised hopes across Northern Ireland and beyond.
The inquiry, chaired by Lord Turnbull, was established by the previous UK government to determine whether British authorities could have prevented the explosion. Last year, the panel heard personal statements from survivors and bereaved families. In this phase, it is reconstructing the plot itself — and expanding the circle of responsibility.
Greaney told the tribunal that claims of responsibility were made to journalists at RTE and the Irish News in the days after the blast. He said the claims were consistent with other evidence pointing to the Real IRA, the breakaway faction that rejected the peace settlement. But, he added, that is "the start, not the end" of the inquiry's work.
The joint-operation theory traces back to intelligence gathered by David Rupert, an American businessman who worked as a source for both the FBI and Britain's MI5 inside republican dissident circles. According to Greaney, Rupert's information that the bombing was "a joint operation" came directly from Michael McKevitt, the Real IRA leader later found civilly liable for the attack.
McKevitt, who died in 2021, had been convicted in 2001 by Ireland's Special Criminal Court of directing terrorism — a landmark prosecution in which Rupert's undercover reporting was central. The inquiry is now re-examining that same intelligence with tools that did not exist when McKevitt's case was heard, including advanced cell-site analysis of how the suspects communicated.
The involvement of the Continuity IRA, a smaller faction with roots in the 1980s split in the republican movement, would change the historical picture. Rather than a single group acting alone, the worst attack of the Troubles would stand as a deliberate alliance between two of the most hardline factions in Irish republicanism.
Greaney walked the tribunal through the final 72 hours before the blast. By Aug. 12, 1998, he said, a plan was in place to steal a Vauxhall Cavalier to carry the bomb. In the early hours of Aug. 13, that exact model was taken from Carrickmacross in County Monaghan — "effectively to order." Witness evidence suggests three other Cavaliers on the same street or nearby had been interfered with that night.
The stolen car was quickly moved to Dundalk, a border town that Greaney described as the home base of many of the operation's key figures. There, it was fitted with cloned number plates designed to match a legitimate vehicle of similar make and appearance — a standard tactic in late-1990s dissident attacks. If police checked the plates, the vehicle's stolen status would not immediately show.
"Those transporting bombs would wish to attract as little attention as possible," Greaney said. "This tactic was part of the terrorist tradecraft."
The panel also heard that the stolen Cavalier was handed over to Seamus Daly, ready to be loaded with the bomb. Daly has been found liable for the bombing in civil proceedings. Greaney said there were "sound reasons" to believe Daly drove a scout car that led the bomb vehicle into Omagh on Aug. 15. Séamus McKenna, now dead, was in the car carrying the device. The two-car formation gave the crew an escape route: the scout car could clear the way and, after the device was left, the team could get away quickly.
Colm Murphy, who died in 2023 and was also found liable for the bombing in civil proceedings, was identified by Greaney as a central organizer — a man who, in the inquiry's view, "sat like a spider at the centre of the web."
Greaney characterized the plotters as hardened operatives who had been running a violent campaign for months before Omagh. Their priority, he said, was simple: not getting caught.
The inquiry is not starting from zero. In 2009, victims' families won a landmark civil case in the Belfast High Court, where a judge found several men liable for the bombing — including McKevitt, Murphy and Daly — and awarded damages. That judgment gave families a legal record of responsibility even as criminal prosecutions stalled.
The current hearings are, in effect, building on that record with far deeper access to evidence. Mobile phone analysis will be a key strand, Greaney said, noting that the inquiry's legal team assesses that the dissident group responsible "did indeed play a key role in the attack."
Later this week, the panel is expected to hear a pre-recorded witness statement from a senior Garda officer about the theft of the car used in the explosion — a sign, the families hope, that Irish authorities are finally engaging seriously with the process.
Michael Gallagher, whose son Aiden was killed in the attack, said the inquiry is at last reaching the crucial details: what happened in the final days and hours before the bomb. He called it a "difficult but hugely important" stage, noting that this was a cross-border crime and that most of the evidence lies in the Republic of Ireland. He welcomed the cooperation of the Gardaí and said the families hope the process yields "truth and dignity."
Claire Hayes, whose brother Alan Radford was killed, said this chapter of the inquiry has been a "long time coming." Twenty-eight years after the bomb, she said, there has been little engagement from the south of Ireland, and she urged Irish authorities to share all the knowledge they hold.
The inquiry is expected to continue hearing evidence for many more months before delivering its findings. Whatever the final report concludes, its significance will extend beyond the families. The question of whether the Real IRA and the Continuity IRA acted together goes to the heart of how the end of the Troubles is remembered — and how the security services of two states assessed the threat they faced in the summer of 1998.
For American readers, the case is also a reminder of the role U.S. law enforcement played in the final years of the conflict. Rupert, an American citizen, risked his life to document republican paramilitary activity, and his intelligence helped convict McKevitt and now underpins the joint-enterprise theory. The FBI's interest in dissident republican networks was closely tied to fears that American fundraising was helping to finance bomb attacks in Northern Ireland.
The inquiry has no power to prosecute. Its authority lies in the force of its findings — in settling, at last, the record of who planned the worst massacre of the Troubles, and whether it could have been prevented. For the families who have spent 28 years seeking that answer, that record is the only justice left.
