Letter published in Belfast Telegraph and Irish News after Liverpool University/Irish News poll on Legacy issues today

The latest opinion poll in the Irish News indicates growing  support for drawing a line under the past with some form of Amnesty. We would argue that the Truth Recovery Process remains the best means of addressing this highly charged issue. It offers victims and survivors an opportunity to find out what happened and why, and compensation. It offers former combatants on all sides an opportunity to make some sort of amends for their actions, while also providing an opportunity to explain them. In return they would receive a conditional amnesty from criminal and civil actions, provided they acted in good faith.

By addressing issues through a mediation service such as we propose it avoids the combative arena of the courts of law where the emphasis for both sides is on winning rather than truth recovery and the losers are often further traumatised. The people most cruelly trapped in the past are victims and survivors and the legal system does them few favours.

Our model, which is based on a mediation model, would be conducted in private and the findings would only be released by the agreement of the participants. We believe that in many cases they would wish to do so where the process is successful in order to share the benefits with others.

The creation of a pilot scheme offers a way forward that would be based on learned experience and would probably cost less than a single major Legacy case taken through the courts.

We would urge your readers to look at our proposal at www.truthrecoveryprocess.ie and decide for themselves.  

(This letter was sent to the Belfast Telegraph and Irish News in light of the opinion poll published by the Irish News on February 14th and 15th, 2022, indicating a major shift in public opinion towards legacy issues. Despite the near unanimity of political parties and groups representing victims and survivors that Truth and Justice through the courts remains the only acceptable way forward, the poll shows that 48.2% of people who have no strong Unionist or Nationalist identity (a growing demographic) believe there should be some sort of General Amnesty and Truth Recovery Process to replace reliance on the courts and the PSNI, that 40.4% of people identifying themselves as Unionists do so and 37% of Nationalists.
Nor were Legacy issues a priority for the vast majority of the electorate.
In the light of these findings we believe that our Truth Recovery Process based on conditional amnesties provides the best alternative to a general amnesty as it leaves victims and survivors with the option of continuing to pursue cases through the courts, provides a verifiable method of Truth Recovery and provides a better path towards reconciliation at both individual and community level.)