Words no consolation to families

The apology offered by the IRA yesterday to the families of the disappeared’, while unprecedented, must be tempered with the knowledge that it has caused decades of untold heartbreak, grief and trauma to those who were robbed of a parent, a child or a sibling.

Too many of them still live in an often futile hope that they may one day at least have the peace of laying a loved one to rest.

The family of mother-of-10 Jean McConville have endured the agony of the past 30 years not knowing where the remains of their murdered mother were. She was killed at the age of 37, simply because she went to the aid of a fatally injured British soldier outside her own front door.