Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

More than 700 people were murdered by the British Army and their loyalist death squads in Ireland during the Troubles. I am thinking about people such as Denise Mullen, a former Aontú councillor in east Tyrone. At four years of age, she witnessed the murder of her father Denis by the Glenanne gang. The killer was a member of the British territorial army. He pumped 17 bullets into her father at their family home. He then sent a burst of machine gun fire in the direction of her mother Olive, narrowly missing her. All this was witnessed by a four-year-old child. When murders of this nature were carried out by the British state, or in collusion with it, they were normally swiftly covered up by the authorities in Britain. It is an incredible that such cover-ups heaps massive misery on the families and survivors of those horrific killings. Indeed, the British often cast smears on the victims themselves to claim they were responsible for their own deaths.

This year, the Tory Government have passed the legacy Act through the British Houses of Parliament. That Act is the son and heir of many years of British cover-up in the North of Ireland. The legacy Act is designed to allow the British military to get away with murder. It slams the door on the tortuous campaigns for truth and justice engaged in by many families. The legacy Act is a unilateral action on the part of the British Government. It gives the two fingers to the Government here. It gives the two fingers to the rule of law, to every single victim of the British Government and to every political party on the island of Ireland. It drives a coach and four through the Good Friday Agreement.

Society in the North is in free fall. The democratic institutions have been gutted by the undemocratic boycott on the part of the Democratic Unionist Party. Democratic institutions are not just ornaments. They are not ornaments at all. They are a human right and they have been denied to Irish people in the North of Ireland by a disinterested Tory Government and a disinterested Southern Administration. All this has led to a significant corrosion of public services in the North as budgets for health, education, housing and transport have been frozen.

The Government is a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement, but the Government is not co-guaranteeing anything at the moment. The Tories have reduced this Government to being a bystander on key aspects of the Good Friday Agreement. I am not sure if the Government even has the self-awareness to recognise that.

The only way we can put a stop to the legacy Act is for the Government to bring the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights. This case will have to be taken before January 18. There are 36 days for the Government to take the case. For the past number of weeks and months, the Government has been making excuses in relation to this matter. The Christmas holidays will take at least 14 days out of the 36 to which I refer. The Government has literally three weeks to make a decision on this. Will the Government stand by the rule of law? Will it stand by those victims? Will the Taoiseach declare today that the Irish Government will take the British Government to the European Court of Human Rights?

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