Mr. Mark Thompson:

I will jump in quickly on the question of whether the Bill is salvageable or redeemable. I quote the chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, Alyson Kilpatrick, who is an eminent barrister and a specialist in Article 2 law. She told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of the UK Parliament and has said on many occasions internationally that it is irredeemable. We believe that is the case after taking advice from people at the United Nations and experts on law in leading academic fields. The Bill cannot be fixed. It needs to just go.

We argue that taking the case is a humanitarian act. We talk about the impact on families. Five years ago, we had more than 320 mothers on our database system of members. Today, just under 100 mothers are left. This is time sensitive. Maureen Rafferty accompanied me to meet former Tánaiste, Deputy Coveney, in Belfast, when he was Minister for Foreign Affairs. She said to him that she was pleading with him as an Irish citizen, that she had been held on a string dangling for two and a half decades on a promise of an investigation that has never happened, and now this legislation will take that away. She also said she will not see the next five or six years, which is the time it takes to get to Strasbourg, and that she needed the Minister to intervene and act because he could short circuit that and go directly to Strasbourg with an interstate case and maybe in her lifetime, if she lives for the next five or six years, she will see some sense of satisfaction, remedy and accountability. Otherwise, she cannot exhaust the processes of going through the domestic legal system as it would take a number of years. It is an act of humanitarianism as well as standing up for rights of victims under the Good Friday Agreement. That maybe quickly answers the question. Somebody may wish to add to that.