{"id":509826,"date":"2025-10-18T16:26:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T16:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/509826\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T16:26:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T16:26:12","slug":"irish-state-must-offer-same-honesty-it-demands-from-britain-on-troubles-belfast-meeting-told-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/509826\/","title":{"rendered":"Irish State must offer same honesty it demands from Britain on Troubles, Belfast meeting told \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Irish State has not investigated, let alone prosecuted Troubles killings cases since the Belfast Agreement, despite endless demands for greater transparency from London<\/a>, a member of Northern Ireland<\/a>\u2019s legacy commission has said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been an amnesty there, not by the law, but in practice. It\u2019s been governmental policy, prosecutorial policy not to prosecute,\u201d said Professor Brice Dickson of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery.<\/p>\n

The Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na is \u201conly now\u201d setting up a legacy investigations unit<\/a> when \u201cit should have been doing that for the last 27 years, or so\u201d, Prof Dickson said at Queen\u2019s University Belfast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope the Irish Government will do the right thing and start contributing properly to dealing with the past in Northern Ireland,\u201d he told a conference organised by Truth Recovery Process, which is seeking a South African-style truth and reconciliation system.<\/p>\n

People living in the Republic suspected of crimes committed in Northern Ireland could have been prosecuted in Dublin<\/a> under the Criminal Law Jurisdiction Act 1976, \u201cwhich was passed expressly for that purpose\u201d, he went on.<\/p>\n

The criticisms of the Irish State were supported by leading Irish academic, Fionnuala N\u00ed Aol\u00e1in, who was twice nominated by Dublin to be a judge of the European Court of Human Rights.<\/p>\n

The Minnesota-based academic told the conference successive Irish governments are worthy of serious criticism for failing to investigate killings in The Troubles, despite demanding such transparency from the British.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been not just hesitancy, but unwillingness and foot dragging at an extraordinary rate to address the same kind of pertinent questions we\u2019ve been asking in Northern Ireland since the early 1980s,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

There has been \u201chistoric and sustained institutional resistance\u201d across multiple governments in Dublin properly \u201cto address the institutional and legal legacies of the conflict in the Republic\u201d, she said.<\/p>\n

Equally, she said, there has been zero public demand in the Republic for greater transparency. However, the creation of a Garda legacy unit, agreed with London last month, is \u201ca major departure\u201d.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the joint chair of Truth Recovery Process, John Green, said the Irish Government must be prepared \u201cto open its books\u201d about files held on killings during The Troubles, rather than simply lecturing London.<\/p>\n

Truth Recovery Process favours a South African-style truth and reconciliation hearings to unearth the truth behind killings during The Troubles, where conditional amnesties would be offered in return for truthful testimony.<\/p>\n

Speaking to the Queen\u2019s conference, Mr Green said the Irish Government \u201cdoes not accept that there is a problem\u201d with the level of information that has been shared to date by the Irish State.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are sitting here on our high horses and talking about sending (the British Government\u2019s 2023 Legacy Bill) to Europe, or wherever, and yet we haven\u2019t done a thing,\u201d said Mr Green, a former chair of the Glasnevin Trust.<\/p>\n

\"JohnJohn Green, joint-chair of Truth Recovery Process <\/p>\n

Greater transparency by Dublin would offer it \u201cthe high moral ground\u201d, so that it could put pressure upon paramilitaries to reveal information about the deaths of its victims: \u201cThey are quite happy to do nothing while this goes on,\u201d said Mr Green.<\/p>\n

The same charge can be levelled at London, too, he said: \u201cWe believe that both governments have to open their books and not hide behind sensitive information rules, or national security.\u201d<\/p>\n

Underlining the importance of handling legacy cases in Northern Ireland in a proper manner, he said: \u201cReconciliation has got a bit of a bad ring from Leo Varadkar<\/a>, who\u2019s found his feet now that he\u2019s no longer taoiseach.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critical of Mr Varadkar, he said the former Fine Gael leader has \u201cdismissed\u201d Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin\u2019s belief in \u201cwanting complete reconciliation, as if it\u2019s unobtainable\u201d. <\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWe do want reconciliation . . . But what sort of reconciliation? It\u2019s not just a matter of people getting over who did what in the past. There has to be a degree of atonement and contrition. And then on the other side, forgiveness. Some people say that\u2019s never going to happen. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it\u2019s not going to happen everywhere, but the fact is that it does happen in some cases, and the proof of the pudding is in South Africa, Colombia, and Chile, and that it acts as a catharsis to society. That\u2019s why we believe reconciliation must be the aim.\u201d<\/p>\n

Conditional amnesties are \u201cthe single most important thing that we can do to get people to participate and not to be putting up blocks all the way\u201d, but the granting of such amnesties would be dependent upon the agreements of families of victims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Irish State has not investigated, let alone prosecuted Troubles killings cases since the Belfast Agreement, despite endless…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5011],"tags":[13515,1144,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-509826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-northern-ireland","8":"tag-common-ground","9":"tag-northern-ireland","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115396109409620561","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}