Letters to the Editor: Courts are not the path to reconciliation

Truth Recovery Ireland offer views on Ireland's legal action against the UK's new Troubles legacy law, while other readers look at a range of topics including mental health services

Then taoiseach Bertie Ahern, then US senator George Mitchell, and then British prime minister Tony Blair in Belfast on April 10, 1998, after they had signed the Good Friday Agreement. Picture: RollingNews/Pool

The decision of the Government to initiate an inter-state case against the British government at the European Court of Human Rights over the implementation of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 was entirely predictable and is yet another example of how both governments have contracted out the task of truth recovery and reconciliation for victims and survivors of the Troubles to the courts.

It is also further evidence that relations between the two states are probably at their lowest point since the signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement in 1998.