“The only door that has been closed is that of the IRA.”
Co-chairmen of the Consultative Group on the Past, Robin Eames and Dominic Denis Bradley, were in Dublin today appearing in front of an all-party Irish parliamentary Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement which included Member of [the UK] Parliament, Sinn Féin’s Pat Doherty. From the iol report
“The only door that has been closed is that of the IRA,” Mr Bradley told the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, in Leinster House. Addressing TDs and MEPs, he added: “I think it is going to be a disgrace if the IRA stand offside.” The former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland Policing Board made a direct plea for co-operation from the terror group. “I would appeal to the IRA,” he said. “I know how difficult this will be because many people who were involved in the IRA want to get on with their lives and that is understandable. “But ways must be found if any truth process is to take place in a comprehensive way.”
[And some 'people' who were never in the IRA.. Ed] Indeed.
That may, or may not, have prompted this comment from Pat Doherty, MP, MLA [Speaking from experience? - Ed]
Committee member Sinn Féin MP Pat Doherty warned: “Be careful that you are not used by the British government to try to block exposure of what they were up to during the conflict.”
Lord Eames denied there was any pressure from the British government on how his group carried out its work.
Lets be fair, the governments participation in truth and reconcilation has large question marks over it, after all what was the Bloody Sunday inquiry but the government spending 400 million asking itself questions or does the primeminister claim to have no control over the MoD. Similarily, the Pat Finucance inquest has stalled over the government saying it won’t release information to itself in public, the Robert Hamill case civil servants not talking to civil servants, Rosemary Nelson same again.
So lets hear in public how far the government will go in been honest and what they will put in the public domain.
Has Eames/Bradley got information that all ‘D notices’ are off in a truth commission, I don’t think so.
So the IRA is the only “closed door”. Really? I am safe to assume then that MI5, MI6, Special Branch, the PSNI, Force Research Unit, Joint Intelligence Committee, UVF, UDA, British Army and SAS, have opened their doors to eames bradley? I have to assume that since Eames/Bradely said the IRA was the “only closed door”. And these people are heading up a TRUTH commission…..is that tittering I hear?
Conor, I believe what the MoD are saying is we have shredded the documents, distroyed the evidence and got our stories straight, so we are really to begin.