Ms Virginia McVea:

A practical observation would be that, because the Belfast - Good Friday - Agreement did not describe in detail the framework for dealing with the past, what has happened in reality in the North is that Strasbourg has stood in the gap for us when we face the difficulty of how will we investigate the deaths, to what standards and what should be the process. It is the Strasbourg judgment in cases, such as Jordan, and the follow-up by the committee of Ministers, that has helped to ensure that processes occur. When one asks about the difficulties about withdrawal, one of our difficulties would be that we do not yet have agreement following the Stormont House arrangements on how that would work itself out and, therefore, Strasbourg and those judgments continue to stand in the gap.

If that were removed, we would have further difficulties in breach of other treaties ratified by the United Kingdom Government, for example, the covenant on civil and political rights, because it is the judgments of Strasbourg that have helped the United Kingdom Government stay on some of the right side of those ratified treaties as well. If we had not had those judgments and we had not had the processes that followed, we would have been in further breach.