Ms Sandra Peake:

Ms Begley had a number of questions about the legacy proposals with regard to reconciliation. There is a detrimental impact for families, which we see today, with rising referrals of the bereaved coming into WAVE and people who have never tapped into services before coming in for the first time. They are distraught. They include, in particular, those whose loved ones were killed between 1986 and the Good Friday Agreement. Those cases were never looked at by the Historical Enquiries Team, HET.

Some people were happy with the Historical Enquiries Team, other people were unhappy and others were left with questions arising from the process. Those whose loved ones' deaths had never been re-looked at between 1986, which is when the Historical Enquiries Team ended its work, and the Good Friday Agreement is the group I see is particularly struggling through the processes currently.

There are three other points in relation to this. The first is that we are handing it to the next generation. I used to deal with the parents. I used to deal with Vera McVeigh, if you want even to think of the families of the disappeared. It is now Dympha and Oliver who are taking this forward. Sadly, many of the parents in WAVE have died. We have buried five people in the last two weeks alone. Patsy McAteer, Ann's sister, was buried two weeks ago and a month ago, Michael's older brother, Archie McConville, died. That is indicative of what we are seeing. We are seeing many families losing their loved ones and it is the next generation who are taking it on. We are merely handing the trauma of the past to the next generation but without an understanding of what the context was like at that time. People who lived at that time know how manic it was and know what the systems were at that time whereas young people are looking at it devoid of that. They are looking at it solely on the facts and that is an entirely different relationship. I can see that in the transgenerational link.

It is fair to say there are still paramilitaries operating. We are still seeing families affected by paramilitaries, whether it is on the loyalist side or the dissident republican side. Quite simply, this will embolden paramilitaries to say that they will get away with this and they will not be held to account. It is a damaging message for our society moving forward. Nobody wants that for their children. They want to move forward in a process of peace and they do not want to be held back. The recent report yesterday of paramilitaries shows the problems of that when we look at the independent reporting mechanism. There is a clear issue about emboldening paramilitaries.

The third point is it undermines the Good Friday Agreement. We have to remember that many families voted in favour of this. Fundamentally, it undermines the basis of that if we are now saying to families, once again, we are removing this from the table. You are taking away the small glimmer of hope that families had. We do not have wholesale families here expecting prosecutions but we expect them to know that the rule of law stands and that there should be a proper Article 2 compliant investigation into their deaths.