Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am trying to look at where we are now. Mr. Donaldson asked if we can deal with the present. My view is that the Good Friday Agreement is rapidly heading for the rocks because we have spent recent years clapping ourselves on the back over the great achievement. It was peace in our time and everyone could sit back and forget about it. Then one meets groups such as those before us who simply cannot forget about it or put it behind them, who have to deal with the legacy which has been left. Many of us have legacy issues. I managed to hide my service in the British army forces for 35 years until I came to the Seanad. Shortly before I took my seat it was exposed across the newspapers and I had to revisit it, including the reasons I left. It is history and I will not revisit it today.

One thing which jumps off the page for me is the reference to innocent victims. I want the witnesses to understand that I am very much on the side of the innocent victims but there are victims on both sides. It is only very recently that I have come to understand the hurt and pain among the innocent victims and the discrimination and rejection among those who participated in the violence that left the hurt and pain among the people who are represented here, and I look towards Mr. Stack and Mr. Kelly in particular. I am acutely aware of what their families have suffered and they are to be commended on what they have done. Their requests are simple, but a truth commission is simple until one asks people to come in and bare their souls on the atrocities which they committed.

I want the witnesses to address something about which I have spoken to Mr. Donaldson in the past. If we managed to get someone to that point where he or she is prepared to admit to having done this, that and the other, how sure can the witnesses be that, on the other side, the innocent victim will accept the evidence that person has given and say that he or she is able to turn the page and move on? No matter how much we might want to move on, turn the page and be able to say that we know what happened and now we are content, it is not that easy. I was confronted with this myself two weeks after I was elected to Seanad Éireann when I was contacted by the garda who had investigated threats that were made to me and my family. He suggested that I might like to know who had been involved in it, and that he had the files if I cared to speak to him about it. I was on my way to do so when I was gripped by fear, and it was real fear.

If I found out who it was and it happened to be a next door neighbour or somebody who lived around the corner from me, how would I cope with it? How would I handle that? I remember the pain they put my mother through. I suddenly thought that I do not want to know but I can understand how the Stack family or Kelly family would want to know. That is perfectly reasonable. If I am the perpetrator, and if I walk into a room, close the door, as Mr. Stack has suggested, sit down and have an honest conversation, at the end of the day, having given it exactly as I know it, can I be sure that Mr. Stack will accept me at my word? Will Mr. Stack say that the perpetrator is holding something back? There would be a tendency to do that. We are all only human.

It is absolutely essential to have a national memorial for people who suffered, both those on the uniformed and non-uniformed sides, since we lost people in uniform, including gardaí, prison officers and members of the Defence Forces. If a person served in Northern Ireland for 13 weeks, he or she would get a general service medal in Northern Ireland and a bar on it each time he or she came back for 13 weeks. We had people in the Republic of Ireland, particularly soldiers and also gardaí, who spent months on the Border, away from their families, and we have airbrushed it out of history. We need something to mark that, such as the national service medal.

The war was a dirty war. It did not just involve Sinn Féin-IRA, as it is referred to in the North of Ireland, though I would prefer to say IRA. It did not just involve the UVF. It also involved security services, including some, as Mr. Stack has said, from the South. There were some who betrayed their uniform and worked with terrorists. Some part of a dirty war has to be just left aside. People just have to put it aside and move on, and that is not easy for any of us. Mr. Stack said that perhaps 80% of people would be prepared to accept truth and reconciliation. What do we do with the other 20% who simply cannot move on from it? That is a danger.

I want to address the other victims, those who committed the atrocities. Some of these people were sucked into the organisations that they represented at such a young age that they thought they were doing the right thing. I am not excusing what they did. A couple of weeks ago, in north Belfast, the issue of the prisoners was brought to my attention. I would have been quite happy for most of them to have been behind bars. As far as I was concerned, they were terrorists, but a situation could arise where a former prisoner is released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement and his or her grandchild might be affected. For example, a divorce takes place shortly after the person goes into prison. The divorcee heads off to the UK to start a new life, leaving the former husband behind in prison. She has a child with her, gets married over there, has another relationship and everything is fine. In this case the child joined the Metropolitan Police on an accelerated promotion process. Six months into her job, she was called aside and told that the police did not realise she was the daughter of a prisoner. She was told to hand in her warrant card and that her job was finished. There is a victim who had nothing to do with the Troubles.

Similarly, we met the wife of a former loyalist prisoner. She got her car insurance for £200 sterling. Three months later, she got a call from the insurance company to say it did not realise she was the wife of a prisoner and that her car insurance was now £800. That woman was not involved in any way in terrorism at any stage. She married this man at a later time in his life. When we start to talk and to unravel the issue of victims, there are innocent victims and there are victims. There are victims who were terrorists and victims who have been branded by association. How does the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation unravel that? Of everyone here, the witnesses from it are probably the most neutral. How do they deal with that young woman's career being destroyed or another we were told of who was due to join the Royal Navy and was told not even to bother coming? How do we explain to somebody that his or her life has been destroyed because of something that person knew nothing about? I am interested in how the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation looks at that, and also in Mr. Donaldson's and Mr. Stack's views.