Professor Phil Scraton:

Many apologies for the breakdown in communication. I do not know why it is occurring today. I want to try to group the three questions together, if I may. First, if we take it right back to the beginning, what does my work with bereaved families tell me? It tells me what people really want, and this is all the families I have ever worked with and it is absolutely clear from all that has been said today. People want to know the detail of the context in which their loved one died. They want to understand the specific circumstances in which their loved one died. They also want to explore the consequences.

Currently, the State's priority is to establish these priorities generically for families. We are talking about families as if they are one. In the work I did on Hillsborough, there were 91 families involved, all of whom had their own specific needs and requirements in terms of the inquests even though all died in the same circumstance. In this situation, where each of those who died did so in very specific circumstances, every family should have the right to access the details of those deaths. Ms Corless stated that we need to know what happened as regards all deaths - how the burials took place, who was responsible for discarding the babies and so forth. We need answers to that. What Ms Corless is undoubtedly saying is that she wants those investigations to be specific to each death. I will take that into what is so significant in all of this, the inquests.

As we already stated, the inquest is there to establish who the person was, when he or she died and where he or she died as closely as possible but also how he or she died. This is the issue central to all inquests in all circumstances, namely, the specific circumstances of how a person died. We do not really have any choice in this because these, we would argue, are article 2 inquests. The current proposal disapplies the coroner's jurisdictional powers and blocks the right to inquest. When I read in the proposed Bill that there would be discretion on this I was really surprised. There can be no discretion on article 2 inquests. It is an obligation on the State, a dual obligation, and this answers two of the questions raised previously. First of all, there is an international human rights obligation that is unquestionable. However, there is also a domestic obligation under domestic law. What is so important from my point of view - and this comes out of the most recent work we have been doing on death investigation, coroner's inquests and the rights of the bereaved in Ireland, which will be published in two weeks - is that what we can see in that is there is a process which is inadequate in terms of investigation and we want to see that changed. In relation to this specific range of cases it is absolutely vital that an agency, if it is established, has agency coroners. In other words, an agency cannot somehow trump coronial investigation. Thus, an agency that is established should actually incorporate the coroner's role within it and the agency should be the coronial role going to the who, when, where and how. That is absolutely central to our argument. We lay it out in detail in the 61-page submission. The State cannot duck that responsibility; these are article 2 inquests and must be seen as such. Even though we might wait for reform of the coronial process in Ireland, this cannot wait. The relationship between the agency and coroners' investigation is crucial.

I will conclude with this point. One of the most impressive issues I have seen in our work since Hillsborough but also going to the 7/7 bombings in London and the inquest into anorexia in Cambridgeshire, is that at the beginning of each of those inquests bereaved families are able to come to the court and state the impact those deaths have had on their lives. This is crucial. It must be a forum where families can come, provide the account of their lives and share it with the general public. One may ask why. The answer is because it is their inquest, not simply the State's inquest.