Mr. Alan Brecknell:

I have to be honest and say we have not looked at it in much detail. We work closely with the Committee on the Administration of Justice and the legal team in Queen's University, the "Model Bill Team" as they call themselves. They produced a report recently that was critical and scathing of the British Government's proposals. From the legal perspective, many legal minds will be looking at how this can be challenged. I will not tell John Finucane what he should be doing but I assume he has one eye to looking at those things.

One of the main issues to emerge from that report was to point out where Britain was breaking international law and agreements. From that perspective, should the legislation come into being in any way, I imagine it will be challenged on numerous levels. The main difficulty we currently have is that until we see the legislation, it is difficult to know what we will need to challenge. We cannot challenge the basis of it, although a case was taken in the courts in Belfast this week about the command paper. The argument that came back from that case was that until the detail is seen, there is a question as to what to challenge. We know what Britain might want to do in this instance, but because it has had difficulties, the legislation may be watered down. If it is watered down, what will that look like? That said, there are others within the Conservative Party who have said it has not gone far enough. That is the sort of position we are currently in.

I appreciate that does not answer Deputy Tóibín's question. Should the legislation become law, along with other NGOs we work with and the legal profession we work with - we have worked with many solicitors’ firms in the North - we will examine if it can be challenged. The difficulty with taking matters down a legal route is it can take an awful long time to go through the courts system, even with a fair wind in the courts in Belfast, if it was to be challenged there. The Judiciary in the North has been very good recently in regard to legacy issues, directing that things need to be done more quickly than they have been done in the past. Even so, the matter would then go to the supreme court in London, and there would be a question as to how long it would sit there before there would be the opportunity to challenge it the whole way to Europe. The issue will be on the table, but it can be a slow process.