From:Department of the Taoiseach

Check against delivery, Friday 26th June 2026

Friends and family of Veronica Guerin,

Ba mhaith liom a thosnú le mo bhuíochas a ghabháil as an deis seo labhairt libh anocht, agus aitheantas a thabhairt d'obair iontach na n-eagraithe, go háirithe clann Veronica agus a deartháir Jimmy agus iad ag tacú le obair ríthábhhachtach Ospís Naomh Proinsias ag an am céanna. Ní bheimis anseo anocht gan iad.

I want to begin by expressing my sincere gratitude for the invitation to speak this evening. To everybody involved in organising this wonderful event I want to say thank you for keeping alive Veronica’s memory and ensuring that she remains one of the most important and still vitally-relevant figures of recent Irish history.

Thank you particularly to Jimmy and all of Veronica’s family whose efforts have made this event possible. Combining remembrance with support for a wonderful hospice which serves the community she loved so much is perfect way to reflect the life, impact and legacy of Veronica Guerin.

It was my great honour to know Veronica as a friend before either of us had become public figures. Thirty years on from her murder, I think it is more important than ever that we do not remember her just for that shocking event which made headlines throughout the world.

We must remember the vibrant young woman. Her passionate spirit. Her deep values. Her unflinching devotion to her family and community.

Never make the mistake of seeing her as a tragic figure. She was a force of nature – who touched the lives of many people and in her far too-brief life changed her country and made it better.

The personal and the public sides of Veronica showed the same idealism and passion.

I first met her when we were both members of Ógra Fianna Fáil.

My wife Mary was national youth officer of Ógra at the time and we all shared many enjoyable and fun filled moments.

Of her many virtues, being quiet was never one of them. Veronica filled every room she entered with energy and rejected the idea that young people should timidly defer to senior politicians.

At meetings she would challenge anyone she thought was delivering empty or superficial comments and was impatient for change.

She was tolerant of most people except Southsiders who could generally expect to be heckled by the representative from Dublin North Central – who generally wore her Dublin jersey to a meeting full of suits.

While Veronica felt that my coming from Cork was a serious handicap for me, she nonetheless decided that I was ok and we became good friends. A night with her and Graham and the rest of her group from North-Central was always great fun – and the political debates were always intense.

In our generation in Ógra it was clear that she would be a star.

Her appointment as secretary of the Fianna Fáil group on the New Ireland Forum was a recognition by Charles Haughey that here was a young person of real substance. He recognised a committed republican with a deep work ethic and the ability to manage a complex series of discussions. It was a role she carried out flawlessly.

Most people expected that this would be a first step towards elected office or a major role as an advisor, but Veronica was too original to follow an expected route.

Her route to journalism was far from standard. She did not go through the normal routes of a relevant degree followed by a training place and rising through the ranks. She was rapidly seen by everyone as a person driven to tell stories which others couldn’t.

Her background and contacts meant that she could have covered politics – but she couldn’t see herself spending time gathering corridor gossip and trying to make everyday events seem more important than they were. She wanted to go deep into parts of Irish society which had a huge impact on communities, but where there were few journalists.

She went after drug and paramilitary bosses because she was determined to expose them and to show their victims that they were heard.

The sheer enormous, unrelenting determination of her reporting remains inspirational.

Because it was the only way of showing their networks and their impact, she gathered information in some of the darkest reaches of society and brought them to light in some of the most read Irish journalism of the 20th century.

Because of Veronica’s work it was not possible to deny that there were networks behind the death and social destruction experienced by communities in different parts of the island – and their leaders knew that they could be exposed.

Thirty years on, the shock of her murder is as vivid as it was on that terrible mid-Summer. Wednesday thirty years ago.

The reaction from the Irish people was as close to full national unity as it is possible to have. Fury that something like this could happen quickly became more focused on a determination that a new response to criminals had to happen.

In free democracies which seek to live by laws which protect us all, there is always a balance to find between limiting the power of the state and ensuring its ability to find and convict the worst criminals.

It was absolutely clear that we had nowhere near the structures and the powers required to find, convict and recover the illegally- obtained assets of major criminals. The people who Veronica exposed and who wanted her silenced knew that they could hold and hide their assets, and that procedures designed to protect the innocent could be exploited by them.

The immediate and ongoing programme of new laws and new bodies to tackle organised crime which followed Veronica’s murder was unprecedented in our history.

My former colleague John O’Donoghue believed that something profound needed to change in terms of going after the property of criminals. You shouldn’t be able to have great wealth and not be able to explain where it came from.

Though we were in opposition, he was able to win support for the core changes which quickly led to the establishment of a Criminal Assets Bureau, which the then minister Nora Owen drove and delivered with determination. There was unanimity across the Dail in response to Veronica’s murder.

I know that there are current and former members attending here tonight and I want to acknowledge them and thank them for their work on behalf of the people of Ireland.

In the thirty years since its inception, the Criminal Assets Bureau has had a huge impact in tackling criminal activity across the country.

It denies criminals the assets acquired through illegal activities in a range of areas, from drug trafficking to theft, from fraud to money laundering.

Over those thirty years, the Criminal Assets Bureau has returned over €220 million to the State and deprived criminal organisations significant sources of revenue.

As Veronica would have been well aware from her early training in accountancy and her meticulous work in tracing the financial records of illegal activity, cutting off financial flows to these organisations is crucial in bringing their activities to a halt.

I think she would be a loud and forceful supporter of the work of the Bureau.

She would also be loud and forceful, and correct, in saying that crime is constantly evolving and adapting – and this demands that we also evolve and adapt.

That is why my Government is introducing amendments to the Criminal Assets Bureau legislation, to strengthen our legal armoury.

These updates will enable faster and more efficient seizure of criminal assets.

We all know of examples of serious criminals who impact on our communities. The reality is that there is no developed country which is entirely free of this scourge, but because of the work of our Gardai, our courts, our public servants and our media, many are held to account and their impact is much lower than it would be if we returned to past practices.

While Veronica’s work focused on exposing criminal activities, this was based in her belief in helping communities, particularly but not exclusively, here in Dublin.

Our first priority needs to be local communities. This is why we established the Community Safety Fund in 2021.

The Fund redirects proceeds of crime seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau and An Garda Siochana back into communities across the country.

Its purpose is simple: To provide opportunities. To tackle local crime. And to reinvest proceeds of illegal activities into local initiatives that make communities stronger and safer.

The Fund has supported 127 community safety projects to date, all across Ireland. The latest fund, awarded in 2025, provided funding of over €4 million to 42 projects nationwide.

The projects funded through this scheme are varied and touch on many different areas that Veronica would have reported upon. Projects to counter drug related intimidation; to support youth justice and addiction recovery; as well as projects fighting domestic, sexual and gender-based violence.

I want this work to go further, and for such initiatives to be a central part of state support in communities impacted by street-level crime.

The tangible results on the ground demonstrate the real returns when we proactively invest in keeping our communities safe.

Because we have serious issues with crime people can often fall into the trap of saying that nothing has changed since Veronica’s time.

The facts show that, even with a population which has grown by over a million, concerted work – new laws, new structures, new investments, new policy policies- has led to significant reductions in firearm related murders. The prosecution and conviction of organised criminals associated with gang violence in Dublin – and their pursuit even when they scurry out of the country looking to hide – has dramatically improved.

This year will also mark another important milestone – 5 years since the inception of Operation Tara.

Operation Tara is not just a standard policing strategy to tackle crime.

It is an operation for the modern world, driven by data and intelligence and focused on those who profit from the drugs trade. It seeks to get to the heart of these criminal organisations and disrupt their activities.

It sends a clear message to those involved with the drug trade – we will enforce the law, we will bring you to justice and we will always stand on the side of law-abiding citizens - doing everything to keep them and their communities safe.

Veronica showed us journalism at its most dynamic, independent and effective. She set a new agenda and broke away from following standard populist framings.

There was an ‘us versus them’ but it was us as a society against those who sought to undermine it, who cared nothing for others and thought they were untouchable.

It was fearless, it was independent, it was compassionate and it served a real public interest.

Yet this is a moment in history where professional journalism is under real pressure. The growth of low-information, repetitive and unreliable pseudo-journalism online has changed the news environment permanently.

There are societies where increasingly intolerant and authoritarian governments are happy to undermine independent journalism, and their societies have suffered immensely from this.

I am determined that this will not happen in Ireland.

Fundamentally it is the job of journalists to persuade the public of the worth of their work – and it is on this that their success will be determined. But equally, it is clear that there needs to be foundational support to enable the profession to do the work which would otherwise be ignored by the instant-hit online mentality.

We’ve removed VAT, introduced new independently-administered schemes and increased existing funding for journalism. This is not something which there was a large public demand for, but it is vitally important if we want an Ireland which has a free, democratic and professional media.

I think it is a wonderful decision of the Guerin family to link remembering Veronica with support of new facilities at the St Francis Hospice which serves people in her beloved Northside of Dublin.

Palliative care is about many things, but most of all it is about honouring the lives of those we love and all who are approaching their final days.

For me the development of palliative care has been one of the consistent causes of my time in public office. As Minister for Health, I published the first Palliative Care Council report to develop standards and set out a roadmap for expanding this care.

Throughout the country I have seen modern hospice care not only provide comfort at the most difficult and emotional times, but also help families to find the space and opportunity to remember together and create new memories.

St. Francis’s is a facility committed to this ethos of care and respect. It is a genuinely fitting memorial to Veronica that she will be remembered through supporting its work.

‘Truth and transparency’ is the title of tonight’s event.

It is a fitting title as these were the values that Veronica championed throughout her life and career.

Veronica achieved much in her lifetime.

She was a talented athlete, a devoted mother, wife, sister and daughter – and she was a journalist whose work earned international respect. But perhaps her greatest achievement was her determination to pursue the truth.

Thirty years after her murder, we continue to see the impact of that courage.

We see it in the institutions and programmes that were established in response to her work.

We see it in the determination of An Garda Síochána to confront organised crime.

We see it in safer communities, stronger laws and in the countless people who continue to draw inspiration from her example.

Just as importantly, for her family, friends and colleagues we retain the memory of a unique and vibrant person who we were blessed to know.

Tríocha bliain ó dhúnmharú Veronica Guerin, is féidir a oidhreacht a fheiscint fós. Is féidir a oidhreacht a mhothú fós.

Agus leanann a oidhreacht ar aghaidh lenár bpobail a dhéanamh níos sábháilte, níos láidre agus níos fearr, ar fud na tíre, gach lá.