Editorial: It is time to replace the Independent Reporting Commission with a body that bluntly assesses terrorism

​Earlier this year Irish republican terrorists tried to murder Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell, in the long tradition of republican terror.

The Independent Reporting Commission (IRC) has just reported on paramilitary activity over the last year, and it cited “shocking” incidents including the attack on Inspector Caldwell.​

It is the sixth IRC report and confirmation that this outfit should be replaced with one that gives up a proper update on what is happening in the terrorist world.

The commission said paramilitarism is a continuing threat to individuals and society. You don’t say?

It said this year was “mixed in terms of paramilitarism”. What an insight!

It raised concerns over “coercive control”. Ah, that fashionable concept.

And it said that: “Instability at political level has also not helped.” Listen, DUP.

The IRC also thinks that the Tackling Paramilitarism, Criminality and Organised Crime Programme is “bearing fruit”. How reassuring.

A charitable thing that can be said about the IRC is that it emerged when there were hopes that we were moving beyond terror, almost 20 years after the Belfast Agreement. And so it had a different remit to the the Independent Monitoring Commission. Such an interpretation is charitable indeed, given that the IRC was set up after a 2015 IRA murder and an intelligence assessment that the Provos themselves believed the Army Council gathered intelligence and oversaw Sinn Fein.

This latest IRC is report is not as bad as past ones, that read like social work, and talked of the impact of Brexit, etc. But the body is not what is needed at a time of ongoing republican murder bids.

London has not hesitated to give republicans what they demand on abortion, Irish language etc. We look forward to something republicans don’t want for once from the talks, a new body that bluntly assesses NI terror.