Time to share all the security files - Copper-fastening peace process

LAST week’s BBC Panorama programme about collusion by British security forces with terrorists in the North, a seedy relationship that former police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan suggested was responsible for hundreds of deaths, was another reminder that the terrible events of the past still overshadow the present and colour the future.

The programme is another good argument for some sort of cathartic process, one that will allow the truth to be recognised so the atrocities of the past can be, if not forgotten, then taken off the agenda.

The criticisms levelled at An Garda Síochána at a Belfast Coroner’s Court yesterday for not opening files on the 1976 massacre of 10 workmen in Co Armagh, despite a pledge from the Taoiseach, is another good argument for such a process. Lawyers for those bereaved by the Kingsmill murders yesterday heavily criticised officials in Dublin for not passing over the Garda documents. Yesterday’s hearing was told that the State solicitor’s office in the Republic was not in a position to give a date for disclosure of the files.