Britain changed Troubles legacy legislation after talks with Irish Government, says ambassador

Bereaved families can request investigations, as can the government, and the British say it is an attempt to deal with more than 1,000 unsolved killings.

Initially, the legislation offered a blanket amnesty for all those involved with Troubles-related killings, which was widely condemned by the Irish Government, every political party in the North, victims groups, and human rights organisations.

Speaking exclusively to the Irish Examiner, Paul Johnston said after discussions with the Irish Government, the legislation was changed.

“We recognise it is a sensitive and controversial issue and our proposals have provoked a lot of opposition,” he said.

“I think the reason that we started to look at this in a slightly different way was that we were reflecting a couple of things from the Stormont House Agreement in 2014.

“Looking at lived experience in trying to get prosecutions and investigations we were finding successively that it was difficult to get credible evidence that the public prosecutor would say it was strong enough to get to court or a court to say it was strong enough for a conviction.

“So there was a sense it would be difficult to get criminal justice outcomes and a sense also that what families and survivors want is in many cases not to try and fail to get a criminal justice conviction but to find out what happened to their loved ones.

Information recovery and reconciliation is the route we have chosen, we have discussed it at length with the Irish Government who have always been in a different starting place.”

The ambassador said that the British government had adjusted its proposals in light of discussions with Irish politicians.

“We moved away from a blanket statute of limitations to a conditional one for those prepared to work with the process, we tried to ensure it has independence and power to compel evidence and applies to everyone,” he added.

“We recognise that there is strength of feeling about this, but we have a conviction that this is the right way forward.”

The Taoiseach said last week that the Government will use its presidency of the Council of Europe to push back against British proposals to grant immunity for Troubles-era killings.

Mr Martin said that Ireland would "very strongly" fight the proposed law, saying that there are "jurisdictional issues" around the proposal.

There can be no circumventing of basic human rights and entitlements of people in respect to the wrongdoing committed by state forces in Northern Ireland anytime that there shouldn't be, because we all benefit from clarity around human rights judgments."

The Government has repeatedly expressed its concern about the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill, which passed initial stages in the British parliament last month.

The draft legislation offers immunity to those who co-operate with a new commission of reconciliation and stops civil actions and inquests related to the Troubles.

A committee of the Council of Europe is examining the bill’s compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights.

The committee’s secretariat has been instructed to prepare a list of detailed questions to be sent to the British government, seeking a response by August 1.