The Irish Government has published the detailed dossier of evidence submitted to Britain last year to back demands for a new Bloody Sunday inquiry.

The 178-page document incorporated an assessment of fresh information about the 1972 shootings - as well as a damning indictment of the official British Government-ordered report into the affair.

The dossier was drafted by a team of civil servants from the Irish Government departments of the Prime Minister and Foreign Affairs and handed over to officials in London last June.

The British Government spent the following seven months studying the evidence before agreeing to the new investigation announced by Tony Blair.

The dossier accuses former Lord Chief Justice Lord Widgery, who led the original investigation, of "tainting the victims with responsibility for their own deaths" in order to exonerate soldiers.

The dossier lists a number of other deficiencies in Lord Widgery's inquiry:

• A major body of evidence directly contradicting that presented by implicated soldiers had been effectively ignored;

• The bulk of the witness statements had not therefore been available for use in the cross-examination of soldiers;

• British Army assertions that some of the victims had been firing weapons or handling bombs were allowed credence in the absence of contradictory witness statements;

• The possibility of criminal prosecutions was denied because Lord Widgery concluded - on the basis of restricted evidence - that the implicated soldiers were telling the truth;

• The possibility of shooting directed into the catholic Bogside area of Londonderry from the city walls, hitting and killing victims, was not given proper consideration;

• A version of events presented by the Widgery report had been so at odds with that of civilian eye witnesses that public confidence in the methods, conclusions and motives of the tribunal was undermined.

• Also highlighted was the failure of the Widgery probe to consider medical evidence from a Londonderry doctor or forensic information, both of which ran counter to the report's conclusions.

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