Coveney: We cannot accept Troubles amnesty proposal

"Significant failures” were found in the investigation of murders and attempted murders carried out by the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).

Mr Coveney said it is "regrettable that the comprehensive and balanced framework that we agreed together has yet to be put in place". 

"Last year, as we know, the British Government published a policy paper that represented a radical departure away from the Stormont House agreement and proposed a statute of limitations which would see an end to criminal investigations and prosecutions for Troubles-related offences pre-1998 as well as ending inquests and civil litigation," Mr Coveney said. "It is essentially a proposal for an unconditional amnesty for those not yet convicted."

It was abundantly clear throughout that process that the British proposal for a statute of limitations does not have the support of victims. They do not have the support of parties in Northern Ireland, who have been strong and unanimous in their opposition. 

"They have caused grave concern to international human rights bodies. They are without international precedent. We cannot accept these proposals as a basis for a way forward," he said.

Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said the report shows "the footprints of collusion that track across Britain's dirty war in Ireland, and chart a shameful train of state murder, directed and coordinated at the highest levels of the British system in alliance with loyalists death squads targeting the nationalist community".

Collusion was no illusion. It was the lived reality for the nationalist community and for so many collusion was the route to their murder at the hands of the British state. 

Green Party TD Patrick Costello noted that the state had been criticised by those who lost loved ones where a cross-border element was present and said the Government should set up a historical inquiries unit in order to tackle the issue.