The Irish State has not investigated, let alone prosecuted Troubles killings cases since the Belfast Agreement, despite endless demands for greater transparency from London, a member of Northern Ireland’s legacy commission has said.
“There has been an amnesty there, not by the law, but in practice. It’s been governmental policy, prosecutorial policy not to prosecute,” said Professor Brice Dickson of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery.
The Garda Síochána is “only now” setting up a legacy investigations unit when “it should have been doing that for the last 27 years, or so”, Prof Dickson said at Queen’s University Belfast.
“I hope the Irish Government will do the right thing and start contributing properly to dealing with the past in Northern Ireland,” he told a conference organised by Truth Recovery Process, which is seeking a South African-style truth and reconciliation system.
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People living in the Republic suspected of crimes committed in Northern Ireland could have been prosecuted in Dublin under the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act 1976, “which was passed expressly for that purpose”, he went on.
The criticisms of the Irish State were supported by leading Irish academic, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, who was twice nominated by Dublin to be a judge of the European Court of Human Rights.
The Minnesota-based academic told the conference successive Irish governments are worthy of serious criticism for failing to investigate killings in The Troubles, despite demanding such transparency from the British.
“There’s been not just hesitancy, but unwillingness and foot dragging at an extraordinary rate to address the same kind of pertinent questions we’ve been asking in Northern Ireland since the early 1980s,” she said.
There has been “historic and sustained institutional resistance” across multiple governments in Dublin properly “to address the institutional and legal legacies of the conflict in the Republic”, she said.
Equally, she said, there has been zero public demand in the Republic for greater transparency. However, the creation of a Garda legacy unit, agreed with London last month, is “a major departure”.
Meanwhile, the joint chair of Truth Recovery Process, John Green, said the Irish Government must be prepared “to open its books” about files held on killings during The Troubles, rather than simply lecturing London.
Truth Recovery Process favours a South African-style truth and reconciliation hearings to unearth the truth behind killings during The Troubles, where conditional amnesties would be offered in return for truthful testimony.
Speaking to the Queen’s conference, Mr Green said the Irish Government “does not accept that there is a problem” with the level of information that has been shared to date by the Irish State.
“We are sitting here on our high horses and talking about sending (the British Government’s 2023 Legacy Bill) to Europe, or wherever, and yet we haven’t done a thing,” said Mr Green, a former chair of the Glasnevin Trust.
Greater transparency by Dublin would offer it “the high moral ground”, so that it could put pressure upon paramilitaries to reveal information about the deaths of its victims: “They are quite happy to do nothing while this goes on,” said Mr Green.
The same charge can be levelled at London, too, he said: “We believe that both governments have to open their books and not hide behind sensitive information rules, or national security.”
Underlining the importance of handling legacy cases in Northern Ireland in a proper manner, he said: “Reconciliation has got a bit of a bad ring from Leo Varadkar, who’s found his feet now that he’s no longer taoiseach.”
Critical of Mr Varadkar, he said the former Fine Gael leader has “dismissed” Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s belief in “wanting complete reconciliation, as if it’s unobtainable”.
He added: “We do want reconciliation . . . But what sort of reconciliation? It’s not just a matter of people getting over who did what in the past. There has to be a degree of atonement and contrition. And then on the other side, forgiveness. Some people say that’s never going to happen.
“No, it’s not going to happen everywhere, but the fact is that it does happen in some cases, and the proof of the pudding is in South Africa, Colombia, and Chile, and that it acts as a catharsis to society. That’s why we believe reconciliation must be the aim.”
Conditional amnesties are “the single most important thing that we can do to get people to participate and not to be putting up blocks all the way”, but the granting of such amnesties would be dependent upon the agreements of families of victims.
