NUALA O’LOAN, THEN-Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, said her family members may have needed increased security after her teenage son was beaten up in 2002, newly released documents show.

State records released this month show that O’Loan raised concerns about her family’s safety during a meeting with British and Irish officials in February 2002.

She also told them that senior members of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) did not take her seriously because she was both Catholic and a woman.

In 1999, O’Loan became the first Police Ombudsman in Northern Ireland and continued in this role until 2007. Prior to this she was a solicitor and law lecturer at the University of Ulster.

In general, State Papers – official documents from Government departments and the President’s Office – are declassified and released to the public 30 years after the fact.

However, some records are released before or after that timeframe for various reasons. For example, records related to the peace process in Northern Ireland are now typically released after 20 years.

‘Badly shaken’

In the records released this month, O’Loan raised a number of concerns with officials from the British-Irish Intergovernmental Secretariat during a meeting in Belfast on 5 February 2002.

In a briefing document written the day after the meeting, it was noted that O’Loan said she was “reasonably happy with her personal security situation at present”, but “badly shaken” by a recent attack on her son.

The file notes: “She had been badly shaken, however, by a second attack by youths on her 15-year-old son in Ballymena last Saturday evening. Although he had not been seriously hurt, she realised that she would have to consider taking increased security precautions both for herself and her family.”

Baroness Nuala O'Loan pictured speaking in Paris in February 2024 Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

The five sons of O’Loan and her husband Declan O’Loan, a politician with the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), were subjected to violence and intimidation over the years.

Four years after the 2002 meeting, another of her sons, Damian (then 23), was badly beaten in a suspected sectarian attack in Ardoyne in July 2006. There were fears he might die at the time, but he survived.

O’Loan later revealed she considered leaving her role as police ombudsman due to concerns over her family’s safety, but they supported her work.

‘Catholic and a woman’

At the time of the meeting in February 2002, O’Loan was looking into the police’s handling of the Omagh bombing in 1998.

She told officials at the meeting that she “had been at the receiving end of some considerable abuse” from four members of the policing authority board earlier that day – namely John Taylor and Fred Cobain of the UUP, and Ian Paisley Jr and Sammy Wilson of the DUP.

In the case of Taylor (Lord Kilclooney in the British House of Lords) in particular, she felt “the real objections to her proposals and her role as Ombudsman was that she was both a Catholic and a woman”.

The UUP's John Taylor pictured in 1999 Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

“None of the criticism, however, had dealt with the core aspects of her report where she believed her factually-based arguments were unassailable. Instead they had concentrated on political and personality issues,” the file notes.

“Furthermore, she believed that the (few) questions raised by the nationalist members of the Board did little to counteract the weight of the attack on her by the unionist members.

“She appeared disappointed by the performance of the SDLP members who seemed to have permitted the anti-Agreement unionists to dominate the proceedings.”

O’Loan said she made it clear to the board that she had no intention of backing down from the recommendations in her report, in particular she felt an outside police officer had to be appointed to oversee an independent investigation into the police service’s handling of the Omagh bombing.

The following officials are listed as attending the 5 February meeting with O’Loan: Ray Bassett, Bob Browne and Niall Holohan. O’Loan had requested the meeting, pointing out that her office had been a “very lonely” location over the past two months, the file notes.

In 2009, O’Loan she was appointed to the British House of Lords and consequently became Baroness O’Loan. She is also a columnist with The Irish Catholic.

State Papers reference number: 2022/49/22