Where it came from
In August 2001, at talks at Weston Park in Shropshire, the British and Irish governments agreed to appoint a judge of international standing to examine six killings in which collusion by security forces had been alleged. Four were in Northern Ireland, including Pat Finucane's; two were in the Republic of Ireland. The governments said that where the judge found evidence that could amount to collusion, they would hold a public inquiry.
The judge chosen was Peter Cory, a retired justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. His Finucane report was published by the UK Government on 1 April 2004, alongside his reports on three other Northern Ireland cases.
What Cory was asked to do
Cory was not asked to decide who was guilty. His task was narrower: to look at the papers and decide whether there was enough evidence of possible collusion to justify a public inquiry. He read files from the police, the Army and the Security Service and interviewed people.
He also set out what he meant by collusion. Rather than limit it to an agreement to kill, he treated it broadly, to include agencies turning a blind eye, failing to act on information, or allowing agents to commit crimes. That broader test has been influential, and later reports compared their own definitions with it.
What he concluded
Cory concluded that there was strong evidence that collusive acts had taken place in the Finucane case and recommended a public inquiry. The documents he examined covered the role of Brian Nelson, the handling of threat intelligence, and the actions of police Special Branch and the Army's Force Research Unit.
What happened next
The government accepted that an inquiry would be held but said it would take place under the new Inquiries Act 2005. The Finucane family, Judge Cory and others objected that the Act gave ministers too much control over what could be published. No inquiry took place, and in 2011 the government commissioned the de Silva review instead. When de Silva reported in 2012 he described his findings as consistent with Cory's on many points, and in some respects more detailed because he had access to more material.
The public inquiry announced in 2024 is the first statutory inquiry into the case. Read our guide to chapter 1 for how de Silva described the earlier investigations.