Dr. Stephen Farry:

I wish to say good morning, in particular to our witnesses, John, Carmel and Pádraig. They are very welcome here today. I join with others in paying tribute to their courage and dignity over the past 50 years in what has been a very long and tortuous road to justice. I turned 50 this year and feel quite old, which puts into perspective how long a period it is in terms of having to fight for truth and to fully get on record what happened on those days in August 1971, and what happened afterwards.

I appreciate that the witnesses are probably fed up hearing from Boris Johnson with his constant failures to properly apologise. It probably affects a lot of questions as to how we can continue to highlight and showcase the issues at stake arising from what happened in the Ballymurphy massacre. In particular, I am very conscious that while the so-called apology last week had the wrong focus there are substantive issues on how the Ministry of Defence dealt with the issue on the days in question, in the immediate aftermath and over the past 50 years, including right through to the inquest. These aspects are probably not part of the public consciousness, particularly for an audience in Great Britain who see a situation where people were falsely killed. They were innocent people. The public do not have an appreciation as to exactly how the situation was so poorly handled by the UK state over that period. So there is a job of work to be done to highlight and challenge those issues. The Ministry of Defence, in particular, has been notable in its silence in the intervening days since the inquest itself.

Again, I want to stress my party's commitment to the Stormont House Agreement and keeping the prospect of justice very much alive. Even if the actual real world prospects of prosecutions are slim it is important for all families right across the spectrum that that very much does stay on the table.

It is noticeable that whenever the UK Government has responded to the situation that it very quickly pivots to trying to offer an apology for what happened in Ballymurphy and then talks up what it is doing in legacy. That shows a huge disrespect to the families in that they are linking the families' grief and fight for justice to what it is doing when it is very much at odds with the view of the families as, indeed, of many other people as to how legacy issues should be taken forward.