Professor Kieran McEvoy:

There is a lot in those questions. I will address those asked by Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan and Ms Michelle Gildernew. Deputy O'Sullivan asked whether we could draw on the international experience of other jurisdictions. She mentioned Rwanda and Cambodia. I have worked in both of them and ten or 12 other places. The way we went about our work in trying to feed into these debates in Northern Ireland was to see where we could draw on lessons. One cannot transpose the model from one place to another. That is common sense. What we have worked on is bespoke solutions for bespoke problems. On issues like Rwanda in particular Dr. Bryson spoke about the dangers of State-centricity. In Rwanda there was a big focus on community-driven justice and community-driven approaches to the past. That fed into our thinking about the prominence of civil society in all of these discussions.

I detect a strain of pessimism in the questions Deputy Smith and Deputy O'Sullivan asked. I do not agree with it. The consultation on this legislation will be a defining moment in how mature our civil society is. The last time we had a moment like this, which some may remember, was the launch of the Eames-Bradley process - which was a debacle - and what ensued afterwards. Our civil society was not up to the task in terms of dealing with it and having mature and sensible conversations around these issues. I think we are in a different place now. We have better leadership across the victim sector. I do not think victims can be as easily manipulated politically as they were. Time will tell. There was a question about whether all these things are dead in the water. They are not, but this is our last chance. Assuming this consultation goes forward and assuming it is also followed up by legislation - those are two big assumptions - we are at a defining moment in the history of coming to terms with the past on the island. We will see whether our civil society can hold up. I am more optimistic than I used to be about our capacity to have grown-up, sensible conversations on these issues. I just finished a project in which we did 60 interviews with victims from across the political spectrum. There are significantly increased levels of maturity and reflectiveness among victim activists so we will see whether we are up for this. I am an optimist by nature. We are in a better place than we were when the Eames-Bradley process was launched.

Ms Gildernew and Deputy O'Sullivan asked about the national security and redactions and so on. That is how we have approached the conversations with the Northern Ireland office in particular. A community with a history of seeing redactions made by the British State, in particular, is being told to trust the British State that it is because of a legitimate national security concern. There is no abundance of trust in our jurisdiction. That is a political reality that we must face. We approach it in a very problem-solving kind of way. As I said earlier, we came up with this model which was supported by the two key NGOs working with families of victims of State violence which said families could live with this model. The model accepted that states have legitimate national security concerns but it is not a blank cheque. Looking at a way in which we could break that down, we said no one really has a problem with the State's obligations to protect lives. Naming names in reports that could lead to reprisals is a very big test to pass. The Ombudsman does it all the time and goes through the process of reflecting on his office's Article 2 responsibility. It is not beyond our legal imagination to find ways of squaring the circle. That is one thing. No one really has an issue with protecting lives. We will park that. The right to protect life is one issue. If a judge was making a determination and the interest of families were represented - probably in a closed legal hearing because it is very sensitive information - the arguments would be knocked back and forward and the judge makes a determination against particular criteria.