For the past eight years I have been involved with a group of people called the Truth Recovery Process (TRP) which has been campaigning for ‘conditional amnesties’ for those former combatants in the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ – from state and paramilitary forces alike – who are prepared to come forward and tell the truth about the killings and other violent acts they were involved in. The group was led by former journalist and historian, Padraig Yeates, former Glasnevin Trust chair John Green, head of the Messines Fellowship Harry Donaghy, and former Labour Party deputy leader Liz McManus.

Earlier this summer that campaign was stood down. In our final statement we said: “We felt, and we still do, that is is important to develop alternatives to the courts for those who wish to address the very real division caused by decades of conflict between rival traditions on this island through means other than a very adversarial criminal justice system that often pits communities against each other. It was patently obvious that relying on the courts to deal with the legacy of over 3,500 dead and over 45.000 injured by the conflict was not only a totally inadequate approach to dealing with these issues, but counter-productive in many cases.” [The group made we were not opposed to individuals taking court action to find the truth about what happened to their family members.]

“We were also encouraged by the success of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains ((CLVR), which provided for ‘protected disclosures’ to be made by former combatants, and other people with information relevant to victims’ families seeking the recovery of their loved ones’ bodies, without facing prosecution. We felt, and still believe, that the narrow ground between protective disclosure and conditional amnesty could have been bridged by appropriate legislation. But neither the British nor the Irish governments have shown any interest in exploring this alternative to the tortuous and expensive process of criminal prosecution through the courts.

“With the benefit of hindsight, we have to accept that the Truth Recovery Process was probably initiated much too late. It was something many of us has assumed would have emerged naturally in the aftermath of the 1998 Agreement. Like others we failed to realised that the priority for most of the politicians involved in the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement was to consolidate the positions of their parties in the new constitutional dispensation rather than address the underlying causes of recurring conflict.”

A number of former combatants had committed in a personal capacity to participating in a Truth Recovery Process if it could be established. They had been involved in the earliest and bloodiest years of the conflict in the 1970s. Our initiative may have been a case to “too little, too late” for them. Since the TRP campaign began almost all of the ex-combatants we were in contact with have died.

Successive British Secretaries of State did not last long enough to complete their learning curve in dealing with this extremely complex legacy of the ‘Troubles’. However the Irish government – which showed even less interest than the British – had no such excuse for their inertia and lack of ambition. For a while they hid behind the excuse that conditional amnesties would be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, although Dublin Senior Counsel Micheal Lynn examined the ECHR and told us that was not the case.

All that is left is a few public inquiries (like the Pat Finucane Inquiry), trials and tribunals that will seek to address a small handful of outstanding cases. Many thousands of other families seeking the truth about the deaths and serious injuries of their loved ones – as well as unaddressed miscarriages of justice where people were wrongly convicted of serious crimes – will be the flawed legacy of the past that Northern Ireland will have to use for navigating an uncertain future.

We concluded our statement: “Reconciliation is dependent on establishing the facts – the whys and the hows – leading to apologies and forgiveness. It is not going to happen all the time, but as countless truth and reconciliation programmes have shown, the journey is an important as the outcome. Whatever the future holds for Northern Ireland, be it part of a United Ireland or United Kingdom, or as its own state, it desperately needs a process concentrating on reconciliation. The two governments seem happy to kick this can down the road, blithely ignoring the forever damage it causes.” At a TRP conference in Belfast in April 2023, we heard impressive testimonies of how post-conflict peace and reconciliation programmes in South Africa, Colombia and Chile had dealt with difficult legacy issues, something the Good Friday Agreement had largely ignored.

The British government’s response to the legacy problem was to set up (in May 2024) the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), although this was opposed by all Northern Ireland’s political parties, largely because they doubted its investigative capacity due to the NI Secretary of State retaining powers over the disclosure of confidential British national security information. It was nevertheless headed by three distinguished and honourable men: former Chief Justice Sir Declan Morgan; Peter Sheridan, former senior RUC and PSNI officer (the highest ranking Catholic in those bodies) and chief executive of Cooperation Ireland; and former Chief Commissioner of the NI Human Rights Commission, Professor Bryce Dickson.

Despite this widespread opposition, the ICRIR has received requests from around 300 families to investigate their loved ones’ deaths and serious injuries. However it has faced a serious problem in seeking cooperation from the Garda Siochana and the Irish authorities. It has sought information from the Garda in around a dozen cases. These involved bombings or shootings that happened “within hundreds of yards of the border, where the killers fled straight across, in some cases straight into the guards’ arms, who arrested them,” senior ICRIR investigator Keith Surtees (the former Metropolitan Police officer highly regarded for his work on the Operation Kenova inquiry into the British Army agent ‘Stakeknife’) told the Irish Times‘ Mark Hennessy.¹ Some of those arrested were subsequently let go. Others were prosecuted for possession of firearms. But noone implicated in any of the dozen or so cases in which information was requested were ever convicted of any of the offences the ICRIR is investigating.

These cases are just a few of around 500 IRA killings with connections to the South, the ICRIR believes, yet it is barred by the Irish Government from getting information from the Garda about any of them. Eight letters to the Department of Justice and the Garda have merited nothing more than an acknowledgement, while just one received a ‘we’ll get back to you’ letter.

“It is hugely disappointing that the engagement that would have occurred three years ago with Operation Kenova’s investigators has now completely disappeared,” said Surtees. “It’s now off the agenda.”

This is despite a vague ‘framework’ ‘agreement on legacy issues between the British and Irish governments last September. The main result of this so far has been the bringing into effect in June of Irish legislation that will enable sworn evidence to be taken from the Garda, former Ministers and other relevant Southern public bodies about the Omagh bombing.

It remains to be seen if this will be effective 28 years after that atrocity, the worst of the ‘Troubles’. In the words of Kenny Donaldson, the director of the Fermanagh-based victims and survivors organisation SEFF: “That atrocity was planned in and executed from the South, with the bomb carried across the border and the bombers escaping back across the border. The Irish government should have given the British judge carrying out that inquiry access to courtrooms in Dublin where he would have had full rights to compel witnesses to attend, and to bring people in from the Southern administration in to answer questions. 75 per cent [of the planning and preparation] of the Omagh bombing happened south of the border. Those responsible had been involved in a bombing spree for the previous 18 months and were being watched by the Southern authorities. If that’s not forensically brought out in any inquiry, you’re going to have a very, very jaundiced outcome. If the Irish state were to show a level of responsibility and acknowledgement around those issues, it would perhaps make sections of the unionist community in Northern Ireland begin to think ‘here’s a state prepared to actually look at itself and to deal with its wrongs’.

PS A final word of tribute to my friend and former Irish Times colleague Padraig Yeates. This distinguished journalist, historian – author of four acclaimed books about the 1913 lockout and Dublin during the War of Independence period – and trade union activist, was the real dynamo behind the Truth Recovery Process initiative. That initiative may have come to naught. But those of us who passionately believe in reconciliation in the North as a necessary pre-requisite (or at least accompaniment) to the possible eventual coming together of people on this island are greatly in his debt.

¹ ‘You have to tell the truth about the hurt that people suffered in the Troubles’, Irish Times, 16 July 2026