British bid to cap North murder tribunal costs

BRITISH Government-ordered inquiries into controversial killings in the North must be cost-effective, Secretary of State Paul Murphy said yesterday.

Senior or retired judges are to be appointed to head up the public probes into the murders of human rights lawyer Rosemary Nelson, loyalist paramilitary boss Billy Wright and Catholic Robert Hamill, who was kicked to death.

It will be later this year before dates are set for the inquiries to begin.

But with the government under major pressure over the estimated £155 million (€232 million) costs of the Bloody Sunday Tribunal in Derry, Mr Murphy made it clear that expenditure for these tribunals could not be on the same scale.

In a written Parliamentary statement on the tribunals, he said: “Just as it is important for the inquiries to be effective in getting the facts, it is important that they should seek to do so in a cost-effective manner.

“There has been concern about the cost of public inquiries across the United Kingdom, including the Bloody Sunday Inquiry.

“It is the government’s intention that these inquiries should be fully equipped to establish the facts as quickly as possible, but that they should avoid unnecessary expenditure.

“There is much that can be learned from other recent inquiries about mechanisms for taking evidence.”

Mr Murphy added that the government anticipated these tribunals would “take appropriate account of relevant recent experience”.

The Government agreed to set up the inquiries after separate investigations carried out by retired Canadian Judge Peter Cory, into claims of security force collusion in killings.

Mr Wright was shot dead inside the Maze Prison by republicans in December 1997, Mrs Nelson was blown up by a loyalist bomb outside her home in Lurgan, Co Armagh, in March 1999, and Mr Hamill was kicked to death by loyalists in the centre of Portadown, Co Armagh, in May 1997. Police officers were accused of failing to intervene.