Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

One of the recurring themes when we talk about the legacy issues is the responsibility of the British Government to act. It does have a responsibility and I will get to it in a minute. However, we also have a responsibility here in Dublin. We are co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement. As a result, we are co-guarantors of the bill of rights that has failed to be implemented; the reform of the petition of concern, which was agreed under the New Deal, New Approach agreement and has yet to be implemented and Acht na Gaeilge, which has yet to be implemented. We are their co-guarantors.

Of course, we are also the co-guarantors of the Independent Commission for Information Retrieval. This was the agreed mechanism for dealing with legacy issues. Obviously, it is complicated and needs legislation in Dublin and Westminster to happen, but over the years there have been many negotiations, agreements and details worked out. The British Government may have dragged its feet, but why do we have to wait for Britain?

Why do we not begin our own drafting? Why do we not at least begin our own pre-legislative scrutiny so that we can talk about what we want to achieve? We can get the experts in as part of that pre-legislative scrutiny, as we do with other Bills, to say what is needed, to reflect on how the legislation should look and to begin that conversation about how this will work and take one small step further away from it just being an agreement on paper. That then puts more moral responsibility and more pressure on the Government in London, and it is not sanctions. It is not aggressive moves, but simply saying that we are going ahead and we are a co-guarantor. Even something like the pre-legislative scrutiny of the legislation needed to implement the independent commission on information retrieval would be a bold step forward by us and a clear statement that we reject the British Government's proposed amnesty, the very foundation of it and all the logic behind it.

Ultimately, we need truth. The families who have lost people and who are suffering to this day need the truth. In years to come, my young daughter will be studying history books. Will she get the truth when she opens it up or will it just be more cover-ups and stories of collusion that are never fully investigated? Will it simply be the name soldier F or will it be his real name, which has been published, is out there and was named by Mr. Colum Eastwood MP on the floor of Westminster? Will those who are responsible for the crimes and the murders that are now covered up be featured and named and photographed in the book she comes to read in the future? Without truth we cannot have justice. Without justice we cannot have healing. The British Government's line that we should draw a line under the Troubles simply perverts truth, perverts justice and prevents healing. It flies in the face of everything the Good Friday Agreement was meant to achieve and it flies in the face of everything that the State is co-guarantor of.

The British Government has a strong responsibility to look at its own actions in recent times and right throughout the conflict that it has denied, covered up and sabotaged. We can talk about the Cory inquiry's hard drives being seized by MI5 and arson at the Stevens inquiry - all these deliberate attempts to cover up the truth - but I come back to us being co-guarantor and to asking what are we doing. Any movement we can take, no matter how small, on the issue of the independent commission on information retrieval will contribute to moving that on, to having that conversation about truth, justice and healing and to putting further pressure on the British Government to live up to its international commitments.

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