THE FINAL KENOVA report has urged the UK government to reveal the identity of Stakeknife, the British Army’s top spy in the IRA.

It also found there is no evidence of collusion between the British state and loyalist paramilitaries in the 1974 Dublin Monaghan bombings.

Operation Kenova found in its interim report that more lives were probably lost than saved through the operation of Stakeknife, an agent who “committed grotesque, serious crime” including torture and murder.

Following the final report, Kenova chief Iain Livingstone said there is a “compelling ethical case for the UK Government to derogate from the Neither Confirm Nor Deny (NCND) policy regarding the agent Stakeknife’s identity”.

He added: “It is in the public interest that Stakeknife is named.”

The agent Stakeknife was widely believed to be west Belfast man, Freddie Scappaticci, who was 77 when he died in 2023.

The report, published today, updates 10 recommendations made in the interim report last year, including a call for the UK government to acknowledge and apologise to bereaved families and surviving victims.

It also calls for a full apology from the Republican Movement for the Provisional IRA’s abduction, torture, and murder of those it suspected of being agents.

The final report includes a report of Operation Denton, which reviewed a series of attacks carried out by loyalists with involvement by some members of the security forces in the 1970s known as the Glenanne Gang.

It finds that an “easily defined Glenanne Gang did not exist”.

It contends the term “evolved” to become a “convenient shorthand construct to group together the horrific activities of a broader network of paramilitary groups, “primarily the wider UVF and Mid Ulster UVF acting with corrupt members of the security forces, including the RUC and UDR”.

It also finds that the UVF was responsible for the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and there was no specific intelligence that could have prevented the attacks, which claimed 33 lives.

It remains the biggest loss of life on any single day of the Troubles.

Following the publication of the interim report last year, MI5 told Kenova it had found previously undisclosed material.

Kenova’s 10 recommendations also include a call to designate the longest day, 21 June, as a day to remember all those lost, injured or harmed as a result of the Troubles.

The probe was initially set up to investigate the activities of Stakeknife within the PIRA’s internal security unit and commenced in 2016.

It examined 101 murders and abductions linked to the unit responsible for interrogating and torturing people suspected of passing information to the security forces during the conflict.

In total, it discovered 3,517 intelligence reports from Stakeknife, including 377 in an 18-month period.

However, the report found that “time and time again”, the reports were not acted on, apparently prioritising the protection of the agent over those who “could and should have been saved”.

Last week, the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland announced that no prosecutions would be pursued after consideration of the last batch of files from the investigation.