UK Legacy Act and reconciliation

Letters Page, Irish Times, May 6th, 2024

Sir, – As was pointed out in your editorial on the UK Legacy Act, for amnesties to work “they must have buy-in from victims and the wider community” (“The Irish Times view on the UK legacy bill: a structure with no legitimacy”, April 30th).

The legislation has neither. The one hopeful sign is that the Labour Party in Britain has promised to repeal the Act, although its current shadow minister Hilary Benn has also indicated that he will be looking at how the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) performs in the meantime.

It is no coincidence that the inability of the British and Irish governments to agree a joint approach to addressing the Troubles Legacy is now manifesting itself in the dispute over how to handle immigration. Brexit did not end the need for an agreed joint approach to shared problems, it just made it more difficult, whether we are talking about human rights or anything else.

The decision by both governments to resort to the courts in order to resolve their differences on how to deal with legacy cases is in itself an admission of failure.

Meanwhile, the very least that victims and survivors must have is access to the courts themselves to pursue truth and justice in the absence of their governments providing effective remedies.

Other options such as the Truth Recovery Process we propose, based on conditional amnesties, must also be explored. If there is no reconciliation on the facts there is little hope of achieving it on anything else. – Yours, etc,

HARRY DONAGHY (Belfast), Northern Chair,

JOHN GREEN (Wicklow), Southern Chair,

PADRAIG YEATES, Secretary, Truth Recovery Process, Portmarnock, Co Dublin.