Mr. P?draig ? Muirigh:

I am not resistant to any proposal to advance information recovery, truth, etc., for families. My only concern is that some of the key combatants in the conflict, particularly the Ministry of Defence and the police, will not co-operate with any such inquiry. They will not allow access to their depository of materials to such a process, and it would be difficult to get the whole picture without that disclosure. That has been one of the benefits of an inquest process where the powers to compel disclosure are very important. Section 6 states that any material that is potentially relevant should be provided or disclosed. Looking at what is potentially relevant is a very broad test, and that has meant that families have received substantial disclosure. That is on a legal, statutory basis. As regards any inquiry that is set up, my difficulty would be that neither the Ministry of Defence nor, perhaps, the PSNI would co-operate with it. Without that material, it will be very difficult to have a full picture of what happened in terms of the conflict. I suspect the Ministry of Defence will not co-operate with it. It will certainly not allow a central depository of all its material on the island of Ireland.