Northern Ireland’s DPP, Barra McGrory has made an interesting intervention. Gerry Moriarty in the Irish Times:
“I think there is an imperative in the public interest that society finds a mechanism to deal with the past,” he said.
“Whether that be simply giving more resources to the investigators to get on with the investigating, and then consequentially the prosecution service to prosecute cases if the evidence emerges, or whether or not society is ready for a solution to the past outside of the prosecutorial system, is a matter that I think this society needs to confront,” he said.
“In my view, the sooner it confronts it the better – but confront it, it needs to. I think at the moment there perhaps isn’t a will to confront it in political circles because of the enormity of the decisions that have to be taken . . . But that is not for me, that is for politicians and for society.”
The shadow of the past falls too readily on many individual life’s even as our politicians are rightly focus on increasing the beneficial shadow of the future…
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty