Editorial: Dublin operates a de facto amnesty for the IRA yet London let's it scold UK for its own legacy plans

We report today on a unionist push for the Irish government to face some scrutiny for its central role in the Troubles.

With peers debating legacy today it is welcome, but even if such scrutiny is forthcoming it will not balance the legacy scandal.

While past Irish refusals to extradite IRA murderers resulted in hundreds of deaths, and was central to the legacy of terror, it is only one part of a huge scandal.

It is now five years since this newspaper launched a Stop The Legacy Scandal series of essays in which a range of voices – from politicians to security forces to academics to lawyers to churchmen to victims – explained how lop-sided legacy had become, to legitimise terror. Yet little has been learned from that series.

London has tried to shut down legacy but simply will not put pressure on republicans, such is its determination to keep them in the system. Nor will it contradict an Irish government that repeatedly lectures the UK on how it should handle legacy, and how it must not introduce an amnesty.

This is contemptible given that Ireland has operated a de facto amnesty for terrorists in its territory. Why do UK ministers not say this? Partly because they operate within a weak Whitehall culture, partly because they fear Irish clout post Brexit. The amnesty is driven by a determination to protect soldiers, with far less focus on RUC. A force with an impeccable record will now be exhaustively probed by a commission into collusion conspiracy theories but without, as the lawyer Neil Faris pointed out last week, the normal protections for the accused.

Naive parliamentarians have given succour to EU, US and UN criticism of the UK on legacy by harrumphing about Britain reneging on the rule of law, without mentioning Ireland’s flagrant flouting of the same to ensure ex Provos a quiet life.