Professor Kieran McEvoy:

I think that is true. Mr. Holder quoted a number of examples earlier. Without a doubt, there has been a "slow waltz" from different bits of the security establishment in providing information to legal settings. Even within that slow waltz, one sees the power of a judge doing their job properly. Even within the security establishment, there is a fear of the judge. Ultimately, they may mess around and drag things out and so forth, but a judge does strike a certain fear even into elements of the security establishment in terms of getting information. In addition to the cases Mr. Holder was talking about, for example, in the Kingsmill massacre inquest, which has not completed yet, where 11 civilians were murdered by the IRA, more intelligence information has been provided to that inquest than any other in the history of Northern Ireland. That is a judge using their powers to get access to stuff, and then ultimately those families will get more truth. The Lady Chief Justice did the same in the Ballymurphy inquest - using the power of the judge to get the information. Similarly, Jon Boutcher has demonstrated that if you put a decent police officer in and you give them proper powers and they carry out proper investigations and get access to all the intelligence and so forth, you can build relationships of trust with families and get buy-in.

The other tragedy of this is that no families are going to believe that these mechanisms have any credibility, so we are not going to get buy-in from the people they are ostensibly meant to help because no one can trust them. The families see it as being designed to secure immunity for British soldiers. The perception is that they do not really care what happens to the victims. As Jon Boutcher said while giving evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee a few weeks ago, we might as well build a huge white elephant and no one will engage with it, because there is a also a big question mark over whether perpetrators will engage with it either. If they are not going to be actually investigated and they are not under threat from being prosecuted, why would they come forward? Victims do not believe in it. A white elephant would be built which is designed essentially to secure impunity and it would not have engagement from the victims it is meant to help. It is a tragedy.