Mr. Ken Funston:

On collateral damage and how victims are perceived, Ms Walshe summed it up well when she noted how in 1998, the Good Friday Agreement did not provide for a healing process and one has never happened. Victims have never been considered at any stage of the process during the last 20 years. To all intents, victims have been collateral damage within the dirty sectarian squabble that went on here for 30 years, with the security forces of both Governments caught in the middle, trying to manage it. That is the reality. We have been left with tens of thousands of damaged goods, the victims who are struggling to recover from what happened in the past.

Recently, for instance, a prominent member of Sinn Féin did a walkabout in Londonderry with the Taoiseach. The family of the person who that person is alleged to have murdered were traumatised by that taking place, live on television. Afterwards, the Chief Constable of the PSNI made a statement at the Northern Ireland affairs committee in Westminster about why that person had not been arrested. For that evidence, which the family had never been aware of, to emerge in an open forum has retraumatised them. These types of incidents happen daily across Northern Ireland and in the South where the perpetrators of these crimes walk around freely, brazenly admitting to things they did in the past. It is the case that victims are collateral damage and that is unfortunate because society looks at these people as damaged goods who get in the way of the two Governments trying to move on with more important things. A good example of this was a few years ago where victims were at the gates of Hillsborough Castle while the ex-godfathers of crime were being lauded at an event inside. This is where we are coming from, we are on the outside looking in. We are classed as being the ones causing problems rather than the process being victim centred. This is the problem.