NI Troubles Legacy & Reconciliation Act

Irish Times, December 27th, 2023

As an organisation which supports and represents many bereaved families and injured survivors of the conflict, on both sides of the Border, we wish to respond to a letter from members of Truth Recovery Ireland (Letters, December 23rd). Harry Donaghy, John Green and Padraig Yeates wrote to voice their opposition to the decision of the Irish Government to initiate an inter-state case against the UK Government at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The decision has, on the contrary, been widely welcomed by bereaved families of victims, by survivors and victims’ groups as well as Amnesty International.

All political parties on this island, north and south of the border, and all victims’ groups have opposed the legacy legislation introduced by the UK government in September. Only the Tory Government and some veterans’ organisations have supported it. Serious reservations have also been expressed by a number of international observers, including the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Commissioner for Human Rights.

At this juncture, as the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy & Reconciliation) Act 2023 is now law, this initiative is the only option open to the Irish Government. Truth Recovery Ireland argues that the Irish Government, as well as the UK Government, failed to build on the Stormont House Agreement (SHA) of 2014. In truth, the SHA was binned unilaterally by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Brandon Lewis, on March 18th, 2020, without any consultation with the Irish Government.

Truth Recovery Ireland confuses the Independent Commission for Information Retrieval (ICIR), which was one of the mechanisms of the never-implemented SHA, with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (ICLVR), which, I would agree, has been an effective mechanism for recovering the remains of the “Disappeared”.

The UK legacy legislation will halt all inquests, PSNI investigations, Police Ombudsman investigations and civil actions. The problem for the UK government was that these avenues were working too well! We have seen how effective legacy inquests can be as, for example, the Ballymurphy and Patrick McElhone Inquests. The family of Seán Browne may now be denied, after 2½ decades, the completion of an inquest into his death with British state agencies “running down the clock” to May 1st, 2024, when the NI Troubles Act becomes effective. A number of very positive Police Ombudsman reports have also been published recently including into the murder of Independent Cllr Patrick Kelly in July 1974.

The families we support all welcome wholeheartedly this initiative by the Irish Government. – Yours, etc,

MARGARET URWIN,

Justice for the Forgotten,

Pat Finucane Centre,

Dublin 15.