Tony Blair says it would have been 'irrational' to refuse on-the-run letters given that he was already freeing convicted IRA men
Tony Blair has said that it would have been “irrational” not to grant on-the-run (OTR) letters to republican fugitives, given that his government was already committed to freeing convicted killers.
Sir Tony made the comments at an appearance before the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in Westminster on Thursday, where he was quizzed by – among others – DUP MP Carla Lockhart.
She asked him: “How fair were the on-the-run letters?”
Sir Tony said he had already answered questions about this at a previous hearing some years before.
He went on to say: "In the Good Friday / Belfast agreement we were releasing the people who'd been convicted.”
By contrast, the OTR letters were handed out to republicans in self-imposed exile only when “the police had decided there wasn't evidence to charge them”.
"And it would be irrational if we were going after those people, while we'd actually released the people who'd been convicted of terrorism,” said Mr Blair.
"It was a very difficult situation, but we did the best we could with it…
“They didn't have a get out of jail free card.”
It was put to him that the scheme was the product of a “back room deal”, and “wasn't written into any text”.
“People used to call it a secret deal,” he said.
"It was mentioned in parliamentary answers. We were pretty open about it, that there was a problem we had to deal with.”
After the meeting, Ms Lockhart released a statement saying: “As expected, no regret or remorse was shown for his leading role in the scheme.
"One would have hoped that having seen the hurt caused by the OTR scheme, he would have had time to reflect and reconsider the appropriateness of the scheme. That is clearly not the case.”