Mr. John Teggart:

Deputies Brendan Smith and Maureen O'Sullivan referred to the all-party motion in the Dáil. I received a letter from the Taoiseach yesterday informing us that the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Charles Flanagan, had raised the issue with the Secretary of State, Ms Theresa Villiers. The letter goes on to refer to the all-party support in the Dáil for the Ballymurphy families' request for an independent panel. The request was made, but there is no reflecting on what she is going to do. We are into the sixth year of a Tory Government. In all that time the Tory Government has not been serious about addressing these issues and that will continue. The HIU was going to be legislated for in October, but she is going to hold at ransom until the talks are finished. We do not really have much faith in the HIU or anything concerning the British state. The Tory Government's policy on dealing with the past is completely negative, to the point where there is a lack of engagement with the coroner in inquests. The PSNI and the Ministry of Defence are slowing things down. For example, the Ministry of Defence was supposed to hand over 33 files from the historical enquiries team, HET. It was given six weeks - a long time - to deal with redactions and so forth. We have most of the files already, but six or eight weeks passed and they were not ready. When the coroner asked why they were not ready, they shrugged their shoulders and just said they were not ready and there was no explanation. That is how we are being dealt with in the coronial system. The British Government, the Ministry of Defence and the PSNI are not treating it seriously.

Do we engage with other groups? We do. I have met most of the people here. We deal with different sections and some of us are good friends a long time now.

We engage with the likes of the family members of those affected by the Shankill bombing. We have met all these people during the years and they are the same as ourselves. We always recognise that their hurt is the same as ours.

I think it was Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan who asked about the Haass talks. It was put forward by almost all parties at those talks that the legacy inquests, on which I want to focus today, should continue. When the time came to agree to the Stormont House Agreement in the early hours of the last day, the legacy inquests were attacked. They would have been done away with if the two Nationalist parties - Sinn Féin and the SDLP - had not stood their ground and insisted that this was not a matter for negotiation. A paragraph in the Agreement states the legacy inquests should be addressed, properly resourced and made compliant with Article 2. That has not yet happened.