Mr. Austin Stack:

Thank you Mr. Chairperson, and committee, for inviting us here today. It is an honour and privilege to be the voice of the many families of gardaí, members of the Prison Service, Army personnel and civilians who lost their lives at the hands of terrorists during the Troubles in the Republic of Ireland.

The Independent Victims and Survivors Coalition is a group that was formed recently to give a voice to those people who have been most affected by the Troubles. While many individual members of State agencies, State forces and the public have been immensely supportive, our voices have remained largely forgotten by politicians, policy makers and the public. Our group has come together to collectively address this imbalance and to show how our experiences can help shape a better Ireland, North and South. The group is independent and non-political, and is open to all victims and survivors. In representing those who have had to deal with the consequences and the legacy of the terrorism that visited their families and loved ones, the group has four aims: Truth recovery, justice, support and services and remembrance and recognition.

There are many unsolved crimes from the Troubles, some of which date back 20, 30 and 40 years. While the terrorists who committed those crimes have had the luxury of living a full life and all that entails, those who have had to live in the shadow of the crimes have not been so lucky. The victims in these cases have had no answers to their questions, have had no admission of responsibility and will most likely never get justice for their loved ones. Faced with that stark reality, we are in favour of and would fully commit to a truth recovery process.

However, the group feels that the process as envisaged and agreed by the Governments in the Stormont House Agreement falls well short of meeting the needs of victims. For the Stormont House Agreement to become acceptable to victims the following is required. The process of truth recovery must be victim-centred with representatives of victims involved in the structures, management and oversight of the process, as was envisaged by the Haass proposals. Not including the voice of victims at this level is a grave mistake and needs to be rectified by the Governments; the process of truth recovery must be done in public so that victims who have had to suffer quite publicly and have been subjected to public denials over a long number of years can have a public admission of truth. The exact detail could be negotiated with victims groups. There can be no hidden truths. The process of truth recovery must be transparent. The current proposals stop well short of giving victims all the relevant information regarding their cases and, crucially, they do not allow victims to meet with or question those supplying information or the perpetrators. Victims must be able to trust the process and to do that we need to be able to test and question the evidence. Being handed a report by a third party in this manner is not acceptable and is not truth recovery.

As was pointed out previously, many victims and survivors of the Troubles will never get justice. The group realises that with the passage of time evidence becomes harder to obtain and cases become harder to prosecute. However, many still hold out hope that they will get their day in court. We are very concerned by the remarks made last year by the former Attorney General, Michael McDowell, that the Government had decided not to pursue historical cases. While victims were not consulted on the Good Friday Agreement and had no voice in the process, many have now come to terms with the conditions of the Agreement and what that means should there be convictions in cases that are relevant to them. This group is founded on the principle of not seeking revenge. In most cases, while the victims would like to see a guilty verdict in open court, the length of a prison sentence is of lesser importance as we realise the implications of the Good Friday Agreement in this regard. The group does, however, seek assurances from the Government that all historical cases will continue to be vigorously investigated and prosecuted, especially as many of the victims were in the service of the State when murdered in the line of duty.

The group is very concerned about the way many of the investigations relating to crimes from the Troubles were carried out. There appears to have been a gross mismanagement of many cases and those, unfortunately, all seem to be quite similar in nature. In many cases, eye witnesses were not called to identify perpetrators, material evidence has mysteriously gone missing, fingerprint evidence is missing and persons of interest were not questioned. The group believes that not all of the issues can be put down to simple incompetence and poor techniques at the time. We are firmly of the belief that other forces were at play. The group strongly believes that there needs to be a full public inquiry into the way these investigations were carried out and we ask the committee to support us in this request.

The personal stories and narratives of victims are mostly hidden and our voices have gone unheard for decades in some cases. This group feels that these stories need to be told so that policy makers, politicians and the public become more aware of the harms and suffering that we have had to deal with, mostly alone or within our families, as there has never been any official recognition of our suffering or supports put in place to help us. Many victims have had to deal with issues such as media intrusion, sleeplessness, othering, anxiousness, panic, fear, mental illness, alcoholism, domestic violence, poor educational outcomes, and marriage break-ups, to name but a few. Those issues often manifest themselves in victims many years after the initial trauma of the terrorism visited them. The committee would benefit from hearing the personal testimonies of some victims and I invite the committee to arrange for this to take place at some stage.

Our group feels that the Irish Government needs to put a structured set of supports in place for victims and survivors. We are aware that the Government through the reconciliation fund supports victims and survivors in Northern Ireland and we hope for parity of esteem with those groups. The group feels these supports should be centred on counselling and therapeutic needs, education needs, respite needs and supports to help victims aid the reconciliation and healing process.

In order to achieve that, the group calls on the Government to establish a victims commission and victims forum similar to that in Northern Ireland. Our vision would be that such a commission would manage these supports and provide advice to victims groups and individuals. The group would also be in favour of exploring the idea of having one centralised service for victims and survivors groups in the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

For the victims' families and for survivors, remembering and recognition is very important and it is something that we have often had to do in a private and isolated fashion. During the Troubles 12 gardaí, one member of the Defence Forces and one member of the Prison Servicewere murdered while defending this State. It is a very sore point with some of the families that the bravery of their loved ones, who paid the ultimate sacrifice defending our country, has not been officially recognised by the State by way of memorials or bravery medals. However, we are aware these cases are in the minority and that there has been recognition in other cases. This group is also aware that many members of our security forces who served during the Troubles are now suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. I also remind the committee that a Member of the Oireachtas, Senator Billy Fox, also had his life cut short by terrorists, as did many civilians in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, and individuals such as Tom Oliver in County Louth.

Recognising and remembering all victims and survivors equally is something the State has failed to do, mostly because we believe the State does not want to be seen to concede that it was fighting a war against these terrorists.

This group is now calling on the Government to award special service medals to all members of the State's forces who served during the Troubles and bravery medals to those members murdered in the line of duty, if it has not already been done, open discussions with civilian victims on how best to recognise their loss or harm, reopen the Remembrance Commission and create one national memorial to all innocent victims and members of the State's forces murdered during the Troubles, at which an annual memorial service could be held.

On behalf of the victims and survivors coalition, I thank the committee for giving us the opportunity to address how the legacy of the Troubles has impacted and continues to impact on us. We believe that for too long the perceived focus of the peace process has been on the perpetrators. The time has come to change this and allow the focus to be placed on the innocent victims and those who risked their lives in upholding the rule of law and preserving civil society. We are asking the committee to support our suggestions and recommendations as to how our specific needs can be dealt with in the areas of truth recovery, justice, support services and recognition and remembrance.