Mr. Kartik Raj:

One member's question was answered by another member. The positive work in the Haass draft proposal 7 on thematics was the acknowledgment that there was a series of thematics that needed addressing, including alleged collusion between governments and loyalist and republican armed groups, and reported targeting of off-duty Ulster Defence Regiment soldiers, prison officers and Royal Ulster Constabulary officers. There is also the question of whether the Republic of Ireland or any of its authorities provided a safe haven to members of republican armed groups and the mistreatment of detainees and prisoners. It is really important that Mr. Durkan, MP, has highlighted the work of the Pat Finucane Centre, for example, in joining the dots of the Glennane series and the work of a particular constellation of armed group members working across the Border with relative impunity over a long period. It is not so much an issue of ascribing a higher or lower level of importance to individual satisfaction and the broader thematic examination as it is to say that those individuals whose families suffered a loss of life deserve in their individual case an Article 2 compliant mechanism. Society, more broadly, requires a mechanism that is not constrained by that sort of tunnel vision so it can look across and find patterns. It should not be left to individual families and the non-governmental organisations advocating for them to speak to each other across cases based on private reports handed to them or pick up things in the media on a report handed to family X or family Y to say "that sounds familiar to something that happened in the report I was given."

For there to be public confidence and trust in believing the mechanism is adequately addressing systemic violations and abuses in the past there needs to be the joining of these dots. If the HIU is able to do some of these things, that would be an incredibly welcome step.