Ms Margaret Urwin:

All the feedback we have had from our family members who have engaged fully with Jon Boutcher and his team, be that through Zoom or more recently in person, has been incredibly positive. Everybody is very happy with the investigation and its progress. As I said, it has been somewhat held up because of Covid. Nevertheless, most of the team were able to do quite a lot of work from their homes during lockdown and so on. It has been very positive.

Our dealings have been mostly with the Department of Justice. We also met senior officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs this week. We are hopeful that it will be resolved. The issue seems to have arisen because the title of this is a "review" rather than a "criminal investigation", and there seems to be a block on providing information because of that description. As far as we are concerned, there is very little difference between the review and a criminal investigation. If evidence is found of criminal wrongdoing against any individual, Mr. Boutcher will bring that to the notice of the Chief Constable of the PSNI in Northern Ireland who can take it further. In our opinion, there is not that much difference. The title that was given by the High Court in Belfast, that ordered this review. That is what the judge in the Barnard case called it in the Barnard judgment, which led to the setting up of Operation Denton.