Professor Kieran McEvoy:

One cannot use national security to protect unlawful activities. If people are involved in something unlawful, be they State or non-State actors, or agents of the State in that penumbra between State and non-State, national security cannot be used to protect that. Take that off.

We try to drill in to what are the legitimate concerns of the officials who are working on this. They said they are concerned that information may go in to the public domain about what they are doing around contemporary counter-terrorist strategies with regard to dissident republicanism, al-Qaeda, ISIS and so on, and that this is a legitimate State concern. We said that we would take this seriously. One could build in criteria; for example if they are looking at obsolete counter-terrorist practiCes that are not relevant, is that a real legitimate security concern? A judge would make a determination. I do not know if the members are aware of the size of a bugging device from the 1970s compared to what people can do now. We are living in a different world. A judge, making a determination after legal arguments back and forward, could say: "Come on lads, that is not a legitimate counter-terrorist practice." We could, however, have a sensible, grown-up conversation within a legal process for that. All of these issues are resolvable with a degree of legal imagination and political will. I believe that the national security issue is one of those, but it will require political will. It will probably be the issue where we will really see whether the British Government is serious about seeking to address the past. It is a touchstone issue and it goes well beyond Northern Ireland; it is across the British State. The read-across implications for the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and MI6 are something that the Northern Ireland Office really must consider. This has read-across consequences. We thought of a way of possibly including on the face of the legislation text such as: "For the purposes of dealing with the past in Northern Ireland the following criteria shall be used to assess what is or is not a legitimate national security concern." None of these issues is irresolvable. With goodwill and a bit of legal imagination we could actually do this. I am not pessimistic in the way others are.

Reference was made to the gender issue, which is a very important point. One of the flaws in the Stormont House Agreement is the fixation and exclusive focus on deaths. Some members of this committee will have met people who have been seriously injured who are campaigning for pensions. It is a disgrace on our body politic that we have been unable to resolve that. Again, with a degree of political imagination this issue is very resolvable. We have worked with colleagues in the women's movement in Northern Ireland who are very exercised by the lack of energy directed towards gender-based issues. If we only focus on deaths in the conflict and if through the mechanisms, for example from the oral history archive, a pattern or theme of domestic violence or gender based crimes is established or comes forward to the Implementation and Reconciliation Group, IRG, are we seriously going to tie the hands of the group by saying that in the 21st century a dealing with the past mechanism is not going to address gender-based violence? That would be out of sync by 30 years with truth commissions and any other bodies who deal with these issues. Are we going to rule out dealing with the seriously injured because of our focus in the Stormont House Agreement on the deaths? During discussions on this when we were coming up with the model Bill, our solution was that in addition to the focus on deaths in the conflict a degree of space would be created for the directors of the different mechanisms and if there was an overriding and compelling public interest the director of the oral history archive, for example, could suggest doing more on gender violence or looking more at the issue of torture - which is a very topical issue. People may not have died due to torture but it is a significant theme and pattern within our conflict, from both State and non-State actors. Sensible people would be appointed to the directorates of those institutions and given a degree of flexibility with issues of an overriding public interest. This would allow them to go beyond just the deaths. Again, this issue is resolvable with a bit of imagination.