Dr. Duncan Morrow:

Sitting beside lawyers is always an interesting experience for me because the nerds take over and they know more than I do, namely, the facts.

As somebody who thinks of this politically and has worked in the community for a long time, my concern about all of this is that as we get more technical, the restorative purposes in terms of the reason we are doing it may be lost. In terms of the purpose of this process, we need to shift the focus, and this is why the Implementation and Reconciliation Group, IRG, is critical, away from the prosecutorial to the restorative by which I mean that the critical issues in restorative justice are addressing harm, taking responsibility and restoring relationships afterwards. If we do not shift from a punitive to a restorative model, effectively, all of this will go down the toilet, so to speak, in the way mentioned earlier, which is that the themes will become recriminatory and people will say that certain individuals got amnesties and others could not be prosecuted. We can see that rolling out in front of us already.

Alongside the very important work on detail, which I am not "dissing" in any way, something has to be said about re-establishing the reason we are doing this. It is not to drag it out of anybody. It is essential that we address these matters. The word is "reconciliation" but the focus should be on the future, not the past. The point about reconciliation is that it is possible to move from somewhere to somewhere else, and that has to be facilitated.

On the fundamental issues raised, the question in Northern Ireland, or the North of Ireland if the members prefer that term, is control of the narrative. In any of these issues, control of the narrative has to be addressed. As far as it is possible for us to do, we must move on to a more objective, measurable, challengeable process. That means it must be judicially challengeable but also, in terms of the oral archive, that the principles are established at the outset and can be challenged and measured.

Mr. Hazzard spoke about the folklore. There is very good academic work on how to do oral history. It is not just a case of somebody explaining what happened to them in a wee corner of a booth. It needs to be done properly. It has been pioneered internationally but it has also been done quite well by local community organisations.