Why the granting of Finucane inquiry adds to challenges Govt face over Troubles legacy

Analysis: Julian O'Neill, BBC News NI, Crime and Justice Correspondent, September 15th, 2024

More than 3,500 people lost their lives during the 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland

It is arguable that if the government has its way it may have just granted, in the case of Pat Finucane, the last public inquiry in respect of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

The clue is contained in Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn’s statement to Parliament on Wednesday.

In every other case, it seems the aim is to direct bereaved families to a new independent legacy body - but there’s a major problem.

It is struggling to gain support and credibility – and that, for the government, is an issue made more urgent and demanding by the establishment of the Finucane inquiry.

The week started with news that the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) has had just 85 enquiries in its first four months. So far, only eight of them will get investigation status.

For context, the ICRIR has a remit to examine many thousands of incidents between 1969 and the 1998 Belfast Agreement.

This can, at the behest of bereaved families and victims, be anything from a straightforward request for information to a full-blown investigation.

Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn's party has pledged to repeal the Legacy Act.

Benn points out that the commission has powers “comparable” to those in the Inquiries Act to compel witnesses and secure documents from state bodies. Its budget could be up to £250m and it can operate for five years or more.

In respect of Mr Finucane’s murder, the government was on a hook and facing a deadline imposed by the courts. The decision, decades overdue as far as the Finucane family is concerned, arrived at an awkward moment in terms of the wider legacy picture.

On assuming office, Labour pledged to repeal the Legacy Act and replace it.

The act was brought in by the last Conservative government, proposing to ban Troubles-era inquests and civil actions.

The move to repeal it was loudly and widely applauded – it means inquests and civil actions will return, at some point, and conditional immunity is off table.

So far, so popular.

But in pledging to retain the ICRIR, created under the act, the government has some very heavy lifting to do.

It was put to me this week that the secretary of state now realises there is a much greater task regarding changes to the ICRIR than he first thought.

Root-and-branch reform looks to be required - to borrow the term recently used by Tanaiste (Irish Deputy PM) Micheál Martin.

But that might not be enough.

Others, such as Sinn Féín, think it should be scrapped and the page turned back to what is in the Stormont House Agreement of 2014 - which back then set out new approaches to legacy cases such as establishing a unit to examine unsolved murders during the 30-year conflict.

The government will also have an eye on a Court of Appeal judgement due soon on whether the ICRIR is capable of carrying out human rights complaint investigations.

It will also face a legal challenge over its rejection of a public inquiry into the murder of GAA official Sean Brown.

In granting a Finucane Inquiry, wounds from the Troubles were reopened.

The move, based on the “unique circumstances” of promises made in 2001 and 2004, has increased the pressure on Labour to find a fix for all other unresolved cases.

The ICRIR still appears, in many victims’ minds, contaminated by the previous government’s Legacy Act.

In sticking by it, Labour has a substantial repair job on its hands if it intends on telling other families there is a viable alternative to more public inquiries.

No Justice for Billy

Ivan Little, Sunday Life, September 15th, 2024

Billy McDowell was right. The 84 year old La Mon massacre survivor, who campaigned tirelessly on behalf of victims told me he would go to his grave without justice over the IRA atrocity.

He and his late wife Lily who was critically injured in the 1978 firebombing had pressed for an inquiry to give them and the other families the truth about who was behind the attack on the Castlereagh hotel.

Last week Mr McDowell passed away in a nursing Bangor nursing home without ever getting the answers he wanted. I met him in the home last year when it was clear he was still deeply troubled by the government’s attitude to victims.

And there was a certain irony about the fact that just days after Mr McDowell’s passing, the Secretary of State Hilary Benn did announce an inquiry – into the UDA murder of solicitor Pat Finucane in 1989. Billy McDowell wouldn’t have begrudged anyone anything that gave them justice but he always doubted that successive governments were on the side of victims.

And I know many people like him found allegations that the state had a hand in Mr Finucane’s murder shocking, especially as there were claims that the collusion went all the way up to the highest echelons of the Tory government.

Mr McDowell always said he believed the orders for the La Mon bomb that killed 12 people at the Collie Club dinner went all the way up to the top of the republican movement.

The families who were bereaved at La Mon were convinced that republicans suspected of involvement in the attack had been shielded from justice because of the roles they later played in the peace process.

By another cruel irony Lily McDowell died in 2013 just two weeks after she, Mr McDowell and other campaigners met the then Secretary of State Theresa Villiers to urge her to order, at the very least, a review of the heavily criticised investigation into the La Mon bombing.

The following year she ruled out a review and the official letter announcing her decision was sent in 2014 to Billy McDowell, the only victim of the massacre to receive the communication.

In a joint statement with his friend Jim Mills, who lost his wife Carol and sister-in-law in the blast, Mr McDowell said the letter had done nothing to elucidate the issues raised with her - in particular ‘the allegation of collusion between the RUC Special Branch and state agents involved in Provisional IRA terrorist activities.

Last week in the House of Commons Mr Benn said the circumstances leading to his decision to hold a public inquiry into Mr Finucane’s killing were unique because two previous governments had given commitments to holding one but had never delivered them.

That won’t of course stop Unionists thinking that Mr Finucane’s murder is getting preferential treatment.

A number of families responded to Mr Benn’s announcement by expressing the hope that it could open the door for more enquiries. But that’s highly unlikely with the government likely to say that the new Independent Commission for Reconciliation and information Recovery has enough powers to find answers despite the blocking tactics of past government agencies who are determined to stop the release of intelligence about many murders.

The head of the ICRIR, Sir Declan Morgan, has spoken of a “changed atmosphere” which could see the body get access to information that had been hidden in the past.

With the passing of Mr McDowell, it means that many people impacted by La Mon have now gone.

Tomorrow Mr McDowell will be buried beside his wife in a cemetery which he visited every day before his health deteriorated.