Conor Cruise O'Brien, a senior member of the Irish government in 1974, has rejected criticisms about the way it handled the investigation into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings.
The report by Mr Justice Henry Barron found that the Garda failed to make full use of the information obtained and issued a damning criticism of the coalition government of the day, led by Liam Cosgrave.
"It can be said that the government of the day showed little interest in the bombings," Mr Justice Barron said.
However, Dr O'Brien, who was then minister for post and telegraphs, has rejected the claim. He is the first minister of the 1974 government to speak publicly since the Barron report was published on Wednesday.
"I was on the security committee with the taoiseach, Mr Cosgrave, the minister for justice Paddy Cooney, and also in the presence of the Garda deputy commissioner, Ned Garvey," Dr O'Brien said.
He said that even in 1975 there had been press statements or stories which implied that the British knew about loyalist plans and could have prevented the bombings. But Dr O'Brien said he did not believe those reports and still does not.
"I thought that was standard Sinn Féin issue. I found no evidence of it at all in my capacity as a member of the security sub-committee and I didn't think anybody else found any evidence either," he said.
A central allegation against the government of the day in the Barron report was that senior members of the Dublin government had been told by British government ministers that two men responsible for the bombs had been interned by the RUC. Justice Barron expresses surprise that this information was not passed on to justice minister Mr Cooney or, he believes, top gardai at any level. Dr O'Brien has suggested it was naive to think so.
"I would not have expected to hear about them in a very close security area," he said.
'If it wasn't passed on to the gardai collectively it was quite right that it wasn't.
"In every large organisation there are rotten apples but I would be quite sure that the information would have gone to the assistant commissioner, Ned Garvey, who was the gardai's senior security man and Cosgrave's closest advisor.
"The information would then have gone to the gardai at the highest level," he told the Sunday Independent.
Justice Barron also criticised the gardai's failure to seek to sit in on interviews of possible suspects who were in custody with the RUC.
During his investigations Mr Justice Barron received a submission from Mr Cooney which said that he had no recollection of a Garda request to sit in on RUC questioning.
"This would have been a radical departure and would have had to be regarded by the gardai as essential to their investigation," he said.
Dr O'Brien agreed with Mr Cooney's view that if the RUC sought a reciprocal arrangement to sit in on interviews by the gardai of republican suspects in the south, this would not have been politically acceptable because of the extreme sensitivities of the time.
"The two forces wanted to cooperate but they wanted that cooperation to be made public as little as possible," Dr O'Brien said.
Dr O'Brien also took issue with Mr Justice Barron's assertion that the government of the day felt the greatest threat to the security of the Republic came not from loyalists or the Provisional IRA but from the Official IRA.
Dr O'Brien says that he did not share that view and that nor did Mr Cosgrave.
"I felt that the old Official IRA was bitterly anti-clerical and they wanted mostly to get the power of the Church destroyed. They alienated the only people in the north willing to fight," he said.
Dr O'Brien said that he perceived the group who became the Provisional IRA to be the greatest threat to the state.
He rejected the view that this made the government less energetic than it should have been in pursuing those responsible for the Dublin and Monaghan bombs.
"I don't think that was true," he said.
He said there was no decision by the government to call off the investigation
"The inquiries simply ran into a dead end simply because people were afraid to talk on both sides. Informants would not come forward. I think that by and large everything that could have been done at the Garda level and at government level was done to bring the bombers to justice.
"Yes there were slip-ups. But I honestly believe that both police forces, the RUC and the Garda, hated all the paramilitaries who were murdering them all the time," Dr O'Brien said.
There were bad apples in both forces who were doing deals for money with both loyalist and republican paramilitaries. The bad apples collected their money and tried to stay secret. I think it happened in all forces.
"I think we are talking about a very small minority of people at the middle level and they played a very small part in the whole thing.
"There was always the possibility of collusion at the senior level.
'However, I honestly don't believe that it was as bad as that might sound."
Meanwhile, the Washington-based Irish National Caucus has criticised the government of the day. Father Sean McManus said: "Until Albert Reynolds, the highest priority of the Dublin governments was not to eliminate the cause of the problem in Northern Ireland – injustice and oppression – but rather to eliminate the IRA and to marginalise Sinn Féin.
"Now I hope it will fully exorcise the ghosts of the previous governments by holding a Public Inquiry into the Dublin bombing and demand explanations of the previous leaders who performed so shamefully."
