Tánaiste argues Sophie Toscan du Plantier case should have had a trial

Tánaiste Micheál Martin has argued that the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder case should have gone to trial.

In December 1996, the body of the 39-year-old French filmmaker was found outside her holiday home in Schull, West Cork.

Ian Bailey was later arrested and questioned on suspicion of her murder, but was never charged. Bailey always denied any involvement in Sophie’s death, but he was later convicted of Sophie’s murder in his absence by a French court in May 2019.

Now, following the death of Ian Bailey in February of this year, the Tánaiste has shared his beliefs that Bailey should have been trialed in Ireland for Sophie’s murder.

Speaking at the launch of a book by journalist and author Senan Molony titled Sophie: The Final Verdict, Martin described Sophie’s murder as a “savage attack” that is “seared into our consciousness”.

“The failure to deliver justice, to hold her murderer to account is and should always be a deep shame for us,” he went on to admit.

“The simple fact is that we failed in our duty to find and convict a bloody murderer – and our system blocked alternative routes when others were not willing to accept our failures,” he continued, adding that this was despite the fact that “the evidence against the main suspect was broad and deep”.

“When you look at the details of this case and the scale of the evidence, it is very, very hard to understand why this evidence was not put before a jury. It is hard to understand why the system was so convinced by its interpretations of legal principles that it effectively threw its hands in the air and gave up,” the Tánaiste insisted.

“We can ask for a proper review of whether decisions were reasonable which blocked a murder trial or which would have predetermined its outcome,” he added, concluding that he hopes that the ongoing cold case review into Sophie’s murder can “bring some clarity” to her loved ones.