Claim: Mandelson

The controversial Omagh bomb inquiry was thrown into further acrimony on Friday when former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Mandelson described its report as a "very poor piece of work indeed".

The report, written by Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan, claimed that flawed judgment on the part of Northern Ireland's chief constable, Sir Ronnie Flanaghan, had significantly reduced the chances of apprehending the terrorists who murdered 29 people.

However, Mandelson said Flanaghan had "a very good case to make'' and said that the inquiry "falls below the quality and standards of objectivity and rigour required in a report of this kind".

Mandelson also described O'Loan as displaying "a certain lack of experience and possibly gullibility". He said that the report was based on an informant who, the report admitted, was a "self-confessed liar" and who Mandelson described as "an attention-seeker who I have known before".

Earlier on, Flanaghan had announced that he was considering High Court action. "The draft report reaches very sweeping conclusions about me without me ever having been interviewed, without those conclusions ever having been put to me and without me ever having been given an opportunity to respond," he said.

The Northern Ireland Office tried to calm the matter by declining to comment on Mandelson's remarks. "Nothing should detract from the guilt of the evil people who planted the bomb in Omagh," it said.