There is no reason why the Irish Government should not provide information about Troubles killings to a new legacy body, its chief has said.
Sir Declan Morgan, chief commissioner at the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), told MLAs that the body would be “stuffed” if it could not provide the “unvarnished truth” to families who asked it to investigate deaths.
The ICRIR was set up by the previous UK government as part of its contentious Legacy Act, but has faced opposition from political parties in Northern Ireland and victims’ organisations.
The Irish Government launched an interstate legal case against the UK Government over the legacy laws which halted scores of civil cases and inquests into Troubles deaths.
The Legacy Act passed by the previous UK government has been opposed by victims’ groups in Northern Ireland (Liam McBurney/PA)
The case remains active, with ministers in Dublin wanting to see how Labour resolves its concerns over the legislation before any decision is taken to withdraw the action.
While the Labour Government is repealing parts of the Act, including the contentious offer of conditional immunity for perpetrators of Troubles killings, it has decided to retain the truth recovery commission.
Sir Declan, a former Northern Ireland Lord Chief Justice, gave an update on its work during an appearance before Stormont’s Executive Office committee on Wednesday.
He told MLAs that the commission needed to talk to the Irish Government about the provision of information.
He said: “We are an information recovery body and it is information that is key to our being able to deliver for the people that we are talking about by way of telling the unvarnished truth.
“The UK Government says they are going to provide us with all the information, and we will see if they do.
“If they don’t you will hear all about it, believe you me.”
Sir Declan said the UK and Irish Governments are co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement. He pointed out that the 1998 agreement said the suffering of victims of violence must be addressed as part of the process of reconciliation.
Sinn Fein MLA Caral Ni Chuilin raised concerns about the UK Government withholding information from the ICRIR (Brian Lawless/PA)
He added: “How do you do that if you are going to hide from victims the truth of what happened to them?
“What we are doing is creating the necessary base for reconciliation, by telling the unvarnished truth.
“The people who committed to this were the two governments, not just one.
“Just as the British Government needs to face up by giving us all the relevant information, the Irish Government needs to do the same in so far as it is capable of doing so.
“That message needs to go out loud and clear because it will have a significant impact in terms of information recovery, potentially.”
He added: “We are here to tell the unvarnished truth and some information that the Irish Government holds may well be very helpful to us in doing that.
“If the Irish Government is a co-sponsor of the agreement, it doesn’t seem to me there is any reason they shouldn’t provide the information rather than hide it.”
Sir Declan said: “If you are going to do this you would have to recognise you would need some structural changes in the commission itself.
“You would certainly need an Irish commissioner, you would need to set up a mechanism that was actually going to work in terms of police to police engagement.
“Those structures would have to work in a way which was going to ensure Ireland’s national security interests were protected in the same way that the UK’s national security interests are protected.”
Sir Declan was asked by Sinn Fein MLA Caral Ni Chuilin about concerns that the UK Government would prevent the commission gaining access to sensitive information about Troubles deaths on national security grounds.
He said: “If what the British Government is going to do is to prevent the unvarnished truth being told, then you are right.
“If that is the case, we really are all stuffed.
“I am saying, wait and see.”
Sir Declan said the Supreme Court would hear a challenge in June to an Appeal Court ruling that a Government veto power over what sensitive material can be disclosed to families by the commission is incompatible with human rights laws.
He said the commission “will do what the Supreme Court tells us we have to do”.
He added: “The broader the ability to tell the unvarnished truth, the better.
“If this becomes so restrictive that we can’t tell the unvarnished truth we are really going to have to sit back and think about where we go.”
ICRIR chief executive Louise Warde Hunter told MLAs that the commission had now been operational for 211 working days.
She said 150 people had come forward asking it to look at their cases and 39 of those had moved to the information recovery stage of investigations.
She said: “Cases include the Guildford pub bombings, the killing of an IRA member, the killing of a UVF member, the killing of a Catholic judge and the killings of British soldiers and police officers.
“We have 170 staff, 98 of whom are employed in different roles across the investigations directorate.
“Of that 98, over a third are experienced investigators, 20 of those investigators have already been designated with the powers of a police constable.”