Gerry Adams calls for renewed search of Finucane files

The Irish government should trawl its documents archive to support the family of a solicitor murdered by Northern Ireland loyalists with state support, Gerry Adams has said.

The Sinn Fein president urged taoiseach Enda Kenny, and other key government organisations, to examine files anew in an attempt to help the family of Pat Finucane.

British police and army agents inside Northern Ireland’s largest loyalist political gang, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), had a key role in assassinating the north Belfast lawyer, a report from former UN war crimes investigator Sir Desmond de Silva said this week.

The taoiseach has already reiterated his support for a full public inquiry into events surrounding the 1989 killing.

Mr Adams said: “The Irish government needs to shift into a higher gear in support of the family.”

Mr Finucane, 38, was shot dead at his north Belfast home in February 1989 in front of his wife and three children. A new report into the killing was ­ordered by Prime Minister David Cameron late last year.

Sir Desmond concluded in his approximately 800-page ­review that members of the Royal ­Ulster Constabulary knew Finucane was under threat and an ­officer even proposed the lawyer, who defended IRA suspects, as a target to UDA assassins.

Sir Desmond also wrote that police and army handlers of agents within the West Belfast UDA “actively furthered and ­facilitated” his murder, mounting a “relentless attempt to ­defeat the ends of justice”.