Mr. Alan Brecknell:

On the final comment, relating to the status of the report, it was ordered by the courts in Belfast. Mr. Finucane is correct in saying Jon Boutcher will report to the chief constable. This may be me looking at things through rose-tinted glasses, but I think it will be quite difficult for any chief constable not to provide the report. As for what the report will look like at the end of the day, there is a question as to whether the report Jon Boutcher provides to the chief constable will be the same as the one that becomes public. We have seen in the past when the Retired Police Officers Association and others in the North have tried to prevent information being published, especially in regard to the police ombudsman’s office.

From our perspective, we will fight to ensure the whole way along that whatever information is provided to Jon Boutcher is used in the appropriate way and finds its way into the report he provides. At that stage, unfortunately, it will again be up to the families and their advocates to fight to ensure that information becomes public. For various reasons, no one seems to want to make information public about what happened here, and I have my own suspicions about the reasons for that. I think we can all agree it was a dirty war. Bad and evil things were done on all sides. Nevertheless, as I said earlier, until we start looking at this, putting that information out there and getting an understanding of what happened, why it happened and why it should never happen again, it will be a difficult time. Some very difficult conversations will have to be had for a few years. People will have to admit to difficult things they have done. Until we get to that place, we will just continue on the same roads, where myths and lies get passed from one generation to the next and things get justified for completely unjustifiable reasons.

On the impact on the families, God knows when the police ombudsman's report will appear, to be honest. It has been at the police ombudsman’s office for probably eight years. A number of months ago, we were told that the investigative part was nearing completion and that it would go to Marie Anderson for her to write up the report and make it public. We all know there are huge issues with the ombudsman’s office relating to resources and getting reports made public and published. Every time we hear a report is about to be published, something else seems to happen that knocks it back, perhaps because it has to be sent to people who are mentioned in the report for them to comment, quite rightly so. It slows down the whole process.

We need to look at the demographic of the people we are dealing with. More than half of the killings happened before 1976.

On the age demographic, we are talking about people in their 60s, 70s and 80s. My mother is 88. I attended the funeral of an 88-year-old woman from the same village this morning and I will have to attend the funeral of a 90-year-old person tomorrow morning. My point is about the age profile of the people who are the victims and survivors. They need to have answers before they pass on. The number of funerals I have attended in recent years for people we worked with is heartbreaking. I hope this committee can put pressure on the Irish Government, the British Government and the political parties to say that enough is enough. It will be difficult, but we must do it.