Professor Kieran McEvoy:

A number of interesting points have been raised. Specifically on the timescale, I will give an idea of the best-case scenario. If the British Government puts the legislation out for consultation after Easter as it has suggested, the consultation period would be completed by the end of June. Then the British Government would give a response to that in September so that legislation could be tabled in the House of Commons by November. That could be through the Houses by May 2019 and institutions would be live by winter 2019. That is with political will, with the Brexit parliamentary timetable for tabling legislation, and all those issues. The best-case scenario timescale is that the mechanisms are live by winter 2019.

I agree with Mr. Hazzard on the civil society space, particularly in the media. On the project I mentioned earlier where we have done a lot of work with victims, one thing we have done is looked at how victims are treated by the media and their experiences of the media. We have been interviewing them about that. One thing we will produce from that, working with the very well-known and well-respected journalist, Susan McKay, is a set of guidelines which we hope print and broadcast media will sign up to, which will outline how they promise to treat victims. We will launch that at a conference on victims and legacy which will take place in Queen's University Belfast in May. It arises precisely because of the issues which Mr. Hazzard addressed, with people being baited and retraumatised. Nothing can be compulsory, but our idea has been to talk to victims about their experiences and look at analogous guidelines. For instance, there are interesting guidelines on how the media should treat the victims of suicide, doing so respectfully. It is about putting some meat on that and establishing an architecture around the respectful and ethical treatment of victims. We are in the middle of doing that.

Mr. Hazzard is correct that historically there have been very antagonistic relationships between victims from different sectors of the community. However, in the past year, in particular, there have been improved relations in different sectors of the community. The victims forum, a body which was set up and is overseen by the victims commission, is functioning much more effectively. Myself and my colleagues, Dr. Cheryl Lawther and Dr. Lauren Dempster conducted a workshop event in partnership with the victims commission where we had victims from across the sector, with very different experiences and community backgrounds. However because they were in the shared space in speaking about their experience of the media we got very interesting discussions with people of very different political perspectives agreeing on the same things. I am more optimistic on the capacity for agreement, with a bit of leadership across the political divide and within civil society and among the victims themselves.

On prisoners and former combatants, members will be aware of issues around people who have been seriously injured and the question of pensions. That issue has been hung up on there being a very small number of former combatants who may potentially qualify for a pension because they were seriously injured. It would not require a huge amount of imagination to have parallel processes whereby ex-combatants were treated as ex-combatants and their needs were addressed and met as such, the kind of thing to which Professor Morrow referred earlier, while victims were treated distinctly and differently. That takes one out of the politics of the definition of victims and treats ex-combatants as ex-combatants and addresses their needs as such. My colleague, Dr. Luke Moffett and I wrote a blog on Sluggerotoole.com a while ago suggesting a model precisely around this and we will be holding some meetings in coming weeks on the matter. We are talking about a very small number of ex-combatants. It is the politics of victimhood that have prevented this from happening. I have friends and colleagues who are among the seriously injured and it is an absolute disgrace on our body politic that that issue has not been addressed and has been politicked, as the victims would be the first to tell the committee. I am sure they have done so.

It is a disgrace. It just needs a wee bit of imagination and a wee bit of political will to fix that one.