Twenty-eight years after the bombing, the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) requested a review (again, on behalf of the McGleenan family) and the case file was dusted off by the new Police Service of Northern Ireland Serious Crimes Review Team (SCRT). They assessed the papers and solemnly concluded that no further progress could be made, bearing in mind the 'limited records'. This falls far short of the truth.

The Historical Enquiries Team (HET)'s review produced dramatically different results. Both families bereaved by the bombing were finally accorded the dignity of knowing at least part of the truth – though there remain huge questions hanging over why the tragedy was not prevented and why no arrests were made afterwards. HET officers were deeply troubled by what they uncovered.

It appears that Special Branch kept the detective who led the original investigation (Detective Constable Elder) and the officer who supervised him (Detective Inspector Maurice Neilly), both of whom are now dead, almost totally in the dark.

The RUC's failure to interview the police officer whose stolen car was used in the bombing is also significant. The first investigators might not have considered his potential evidence worthy of consideration, but the HET did. It claims the officer could have 'greatly assisted' the investigation and that 'a major opportunity was apparently ignored'.

This prompts another question: were senior officers worried that others within the RUC would betray him to the loyalists who had taken his car (and who had threatened him if he reported it)? The HET follows this theory.

It points out that the Step Inn attack came two months after the gun-and-bomb attack on the Rock Bar near Keady, and eight months after the Kay's Tavern/Donnelly’s Bar bombing in Dundalk/South Armagh, in both of which serving RUC officers were centrally involved. A pattern had clearly emerged of police collusion with loyalist bombers, already an open secret within the force.

When intelligence was received of loyalist intentions to bomb a target using a policeman's car stolen in Belfast, the alert level should have gone through the roof, says the HET. When further intelligence emerged that the attack was imminent, it rightly triggered a surveillance operation and a warning to the Garda Síochána.

What, then, caused that surveillance to be lifted? 'There is no reasoning or rationale anywhere in the papers examined for leaving the bomb unrecovered,' states the HET Report, 'it may have been a speculative decision, hoping for more exact intelligence, it may have been about protecting the identity of informants; if so it was a huge gamble which went catastrophically wrong.'

There is an alternative which appears almost too appalling a scenario to consider: that police officers deliberately allowed the bombing to proceed.

Once again, ordinary people paid the price. The Step Inn was bombed. Two people lost their lives. Malachi lost his wife, Betty. His three young sons – Gerald (seven), Laurance (four) and John (twenty-one months) – lost their mother.

The McGleenans lost Gerard despite 'clearly reliable intelligence available to the police that could have prevented the bombing of the Step Inn bar ever taking place'.

As to reasons why this happened, the HET has no answers: … 'given the history of previous attacks, it was never likely that the bomb would simply be abandoned. In the circumstances, the selection of a secondary target was highly probable. There are no records of any efforts to disrupt or prevent this event'.

RUC man James Mitchell's central involvement was 'evident' says the HET. That Mitchell remained on as a serving RUC Reservist for a further ten months is unconscionable. It wasn't until after his arrest in December 1978 that police finally raided his home, finding two home-made Sterling Sub-Machine Guns, reels of Cordtex, ammunition and other related items.

Incredibly, for these very serious offences – perpetrated by a former RUC officer – a one-year sentence was imposed by the courts, suspended for two years.

The RUC knew of John Weir's involvement in the double murder at the Step Inn by October 1976, the same month as he received a promotion to sergeant. Yet, also incredibly, he was not arrested until two years later, nor dismissed from the RUC for his role in the Step Inn conspiracy.

When police did finally arrest Mitchell, Weir, Laurence McClure and other RUC men, says the HET, despite obvious links to other attacks such as Donnelly's Bar, 'only cursory efforts were made to investigate them further'.

The limited interview records show 'no determined efforts were made to investigate them in a meaningful fashion, despite the recovery of explosives and weapons from Mitchell's farm and despite all the intelligence that was available'.

The families have lodged an official complaint with the NI police ombudsman, to whose office the HET has also referred its findings.

The ramifications from the Step Inn bombing continued. In the early 1980s, the then RUC Chief Constable, Sir Jack Hermon, unexpectedly asked to see the Step Inn file. Why? Had he heard of RUC involvement? Why else would he ask for this particular file?

What he was given, it appears, was the date-limited intelligence ending in September 1976 – coincidentally or not, the month before the RUC says it became aware of Weir's involvement. Even then, disturbingly, Hermon neither ordered a thorough re-investigation of RUC involvement in the Step Inn attack or a high-level external, possibly public, enquiry into why and how intelligence had been suppressed from the original police investigation.

Both the McGleenan and McDonald families, whose lives have been irretrievably damaged by the Step Inn explosion, have found it difficult to come to terms with the revelations contained in the HET Report.

Those who investigated the case within the HET are also stunned at what they discovered. During a meeting with the McGleenan family (held in the Keady GAA club named after
Gerard) an HET investigator bluntly summed up his own response: 'This is as bad as it gets.'