Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Like the other contributors I have a good deal to say on this subject in which for most of my life on the island of Ireland I have been interested. I have met families whose relatives were killed over the years, and some of my friends have been killed, but one of the most important things we can do here today is come up with recommendations on how we can move the process forward.

I would like the witnesses to outline their recommendations on how to deal with this area. They have made the point about the ones they have investigated from the South. What are their recommendations for the South?
Ms Urwin spoke about funding ending in June. Where will Justice for the Forgotten go from here? She also spoke about the Ball and Parry families. Could she suggest a way forward for the different Government bodies?
For those listening at home, how would the witnesses respond to the simplistic narrative of those who say we should forget the past and move on? Some people say that the historical enquiries team is unfair, that it focuses on loyalists not republicans and that it is time to put that to bed, to forget about it. They say that it does not help the process of peace and reconciliation on the island. How do the witnesses respond to that narrative?
We hear the idea that there were a few bad apples in the UDR and the RUC who were generally the best of men and women. There is no doubt that there were good people in those organisations, who were there for their own fine reasons. Do the witnesses believe that there were a few bad apples or do they believe that it was part of a British Government strategy? When I was younger I read Frank Kitson’s book, Low Intensity Operationswhich dealt with the counter-gangs involved in the war in the North and the mobile reaction force, MRF. People talked about communities living side by side, Protestant and Catholic, with no tradition of conflict or tension and the impact that many of these killings had on those communities. It seemed to be a deliberate policy to try to create tension between communities. The recent book about the MRF described taking pot shots and killing people and so on. It also killed people on the loyalist side, Protestants, as well as Catholics, and tried to kill republicans. It was a negative influence.
The narrative we hear today is that when the Brits were there they were honest brokers. The appalling vista is that a Prime Minister would know about a shoot-to-kill policy. There was a pattern in many of the killings to secure the area, those who engaged in the killings were allowed through road blocks and so on. I do not think that the narrative that Ms Cadwallader offers in her book will take off. There is an agreed, accepted narrative about the conflict in the past. That is one reason why many of those opposed to dealing with the past do not want a method for dealing with the past. Maybe that is why the previous contributors spoke about the Haass proposals. There are people fighting the war in the background. They do not want their own past to come out. When the truth does come out, and hopefully it will sooner rather than later, that will move peace and reconciliation forward on the island for all of us. A structure for this has to be established. I would be interested in hearing the witnesses’ views on what that structure should be.