Mr. Mark Durkan:

I welcome Amnesty International's work on the past and the authority, consideration, sensitivity and seriousness it brings. The report produced, "Northern Ireland: Time to Deal with the Past", coincided with the Haass process and provided much useful thought for people who must grapple with these issues.

Richard Haass and Meghan O'Sullivan particularly appreciated it because it helped them navigate some of the issues and considerations involved. A few of us have picked up on the point about the deficit, inadequacies or inequalities among some of the provisions for dealing with the past, which are quite unsatisfactory. Some people appear to be able to get satisfaction out of aspects of the work of the historical enquiries team, HET, while others cannot because of its poor character in respect of army deaths. Even where people were satisfied with the HET's report on their individual cases, the wider public and future generations did not necessarily benefit if the report was deemed to be the private property of the families.
The publication of the book Lethal Alliesand the great work of Anne Cadwallader and the Pat Finucane Centre showed the difference it makes when somebody takes several cases the HET has examined together and supplements them with other investigative and research work in national archives. They were able to produce a much bigger and more compelling narrative which awakened public interest and concern in important ways. The work told some of those families for the first time that their loved ones had been killed by the same weapons and, in effect, the same network. It showed that no matter how good the HET’s work, there was still a deficit in the truth given to the families, and certainly in the truth given to the public. That is all the more reason it is important that these patterns, lessons, thematics - whatever generic term we put on them - must be part of the further approach to dealing with the past. As well as continuing high-quality individual investigations, if people want to call them that, and making sure they are robustly compliant with Article 2, unlike some of the HET’s previous work, this is the best way to deal with the past.
I welcome what Amnesty International said here today and what is in its post-Haass paper, which points out that while the Haass report's draft proposals are very strong, there are wrinkles to be ironed out, such as the reference only to PSNI intelligence files. It is vacant and oblique on whether it covers intelligence in this jurisdiction and in Britain. Why should it be confined to intelligence held by the PSNI? The scope of victimhood, conflict and atrocity is wider than Northern Ireland and than what would be contained in PSNI files.
Amnesty International feels the terms for recovery from the Independent Commission for Information are too loose, and it is a case of awaiting information. Maybe it is not proactive enough. We want to make it more proactive in several ways and have argued for that during and since the discussions. It might be more difficult to agree on the powers of compellability we would give it. I am not sure all parties would go the same distance. We have to get a balance and a perspective there.
Whatever else the parties disagree on, and whatever sensitivities are involved, the report of the Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland, known as the Eames Bradley report, and all parties in the Haass talks, agree that amnesty is not a basis for dealing with the past. Several people seem to be have been quite confused about that recently, Peter Hain among them. In interviews he recommends amnesty on the back of the recent case. He says the recent case was not about an amnesty, but public knowledge of it means that we should move to amnesty for soldiers, police, Loyalists and everybody, which is a peculiar argument. He also says that, rather than being concerned about what has happened, people should move on, look to the future and move forward with Haass and Eames Bradley, but he ignores the fact that Haass and Eames Bradley made the fundamental point that amnesty was not a basis for dealing with the past. That is backlit in a very important and cogent way by Amnesty International’s documents, and what we have heard today.
People were aware that there was an arrangement by which people outside the jurisdiction could find out whether they would be in peril of arrest if they came back in. Whenever the so-called on-the-runs Bill, which was not about on-the-runs but was about a general secret amnesty scheme, was on the go, some of us said surely there could be a means by which people or their lawyers could find out and be told of the peril. The British Government and Sinn Féin told us that would not be possible and would not be enough. Now we are told the scheme put in place after the Bill had to be pulled is exactly that. Now that we can read the letters, we can see that is what they purport to say. Deputy Crowe is right about that. The difference is that that is not what the court in London was told. The court decided that there was in effect impunity, that the sky would fall in if the prosecution proceeded on the basis of any other evidence or reasons for justice, because of Peter Hain’s and Jonathan Powell’s evidence. The letters are less the problem than the import attributed to them in a court. The like of that would not, and could not, happen in this jurisdiction. A court of this Republic would not say all the evidence is dismissed because of other evidence and affidavits from some politicians or a former political adviser. That would not override and undermine everything else. It would not happen. That is the problem. There is confusion about where the problem, the issue and the questions lie.