Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

A few weeks ago, I told Deputy Kenny that I would give him the contents of a note I had and I will do so. It was not the constitutional advice of the Attorney General.

Deputy Sargent referred to the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission. As he knows, I have supported that for some years in some format, although I never prescribed that it should be on the South African model. There are so many people who have been victims from whatever perspective and who feel their cases have not been dealt with. As time goes on, if anything, it gets more difficult for those people, so I have never ruled out the establishment of such a commission. On a number of occasions, I tried to engage people concerning some model, but not necessarily the South African model to which the Deputy referred. There are many other models. This will continue because the one thing I have learned about victims is that their pain and hurt never ceases, so we need some way of dealing with it. As I said before, however, there has not been much support for that initiative in Northern Ireland.

Deputy Rabbitte referred to the issue of restorative justice committees. I have made it clear a number of times, and I am glad to restate it, that the only way this can operate properly is with policing, otherwise it would open up all kinds of difficulties, some of which the Deputy mentioned. Restorative justice committees must be part of policing. There are currently 19 such committees in the North — 14 on the republican-Nationalist side and five on the Unionist-loyalist side. The five on the Unionist-loyalist side have an association with policing, while the others do not. Therein lies a danger, so restorative justice can only really be dealt with in the context of policing. I restate that position.

The issue that has become known as "Stormont-gate" brought down the institutions in the North. As I have said outside the House, it was on the basis that there was evidence that justified all these actions, which created many difficulties for many of us. Unfortunately, I have not had a chance to read all the files on this matter yet, but as we have seen, this has all gone now and there is no follow-on. It means we all went through a great deal of suffering for something that at the end of the day did not seem to add up on examination.

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