Robinson rejects 'appalling' Troubles legacy report
Proposals to deal with the legacy of the Troubles were today rejected by Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Peter Robinson.
The unionist leader published a 12-page response to the so-called Eames-Bradley report which proposed a commission to examine unsolved murders, together with attempts to study the reasons for the conflict.
Mr Robinson reserved his sharpest criticism for the proposal to pay all bereaved families a £12,000 (€13,400) recognition payment claiming it drew an equivalence between paramilitaries and their victims.
The report’s authors, former Church of Ireland Primate Lord Eames and former Northern Ireland Policing Board vice chair Denis Bradley, have said their proposals were rooted in the current legal definition of victims which the Stormont government adheres to, but Mr Robinson attacked their plans as a “moral collapse”.
The DUP leader was responding to a consultation process launched by Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward, who has already ruled out the payment proposal.
But Mr Robinson was critical of the entire basis of the report and said he feared the proposed attempt to examine the causes of the conflict risked providing a rationale for terrorist violence.
“Unlike Lord Eames and Mr Bradley, I do not accept that it can be left to individuals subjectively to decide whether or not their illegal actions were justified,” he said.
“To do so is surely also to accept the personal defence of the Nazi death camp guard.
“This is the appalling vista opened-up by Eames-Bradley with the complete moral collapse betrayed in their proposals for Reconciliation, Truth and Forgiveness.”
Mr Robinson quoted the Eames-Bradley report as identifying a need for the North’s divided communities to recognise there was wrong on both sides.
The report cited the impact of paramilitary violence, but it also recorded concerns over collusion between state forces and loyalist killers.
The DUP leader said: “Mutual forgiveness indeed: law abiding citizens in Northern Ireland who took no part in The Troubles will be horrified to learn that under the terms of this madcap scheme they will be expected not only to forgive those who engaged in the criminal insurrection, but also to seek their forgiveness in turn.
“Thus the insurrection itself is to be forgiven, or at least ’understood’, by the individual and collective acknowledgement that wrong was done on both sides.
“Even as I write this I find it necessary to check again the terms of the Consultative Group Report, to ensure that I have not placed my own insane construct on their plan, and am not doing Lord Eames and Mr Bradley a terrible personal injustice.”
He added: “In the world of Eames-Bradley there appears to be no unbreakable line between the lawful and the unlawful, or the constitutional and plain unconstitutional, the democratic and antidemocratic, or, at any rate, no helpful purpose served by insisting upon seeing these things in simple black and white.”
Mr Robinson said it may be impossible, and questioned if it was necessary, for society in the North to arrive at a shared understanding of its past.
He said the proposals did not represent a way forward.
Eames-Bradley said the payment proposal was made in response to the needs of victims they met while compiling their report and was adopted from a scheme already implemented in the Republic of Ireland.
The current legislation on victims does not draw any distinction between individuals and their background. The Eames-Bradley report also said its proposal was to go to bereaved families, as opposed to those directly involved in violence, and was an attempt to recognise their suffering.
But Mr Robinson said: “The Secretary of State’s decision to launch this consultation on the Eames-Bradley Report caused widespread anxiety and dismay throughout Northern Ireland. It is impossible to discern just how the report’s authors felt their recommendations would serve the best interests of Northern Ireland or would provide a satisfactory basis for dealing with the legacy of the past.
“The most reprehensible recommendation of the Eames-Bradley Group was that victims should be awarded a £12,000 pay off for their suffering.
“The belief that innocent victims could be bought in this way was bad enough, but the error was compounded on a massive scale when it was revealed that the families of dead terrorists would be included in their proposed scheme.
“Herein lies one of the most fundamental flaws in the approach adopted by the group, which is apparent throughout their report – the drawing of no moral distinction between the innocent and the guilty.”
Mr Robinson said his party would seek to change the legal definition of a victim.
He added: “As for this report, we will resist it every step of the way and warn the Secretary of State not to attempt to proceed with implementing it.”
