Legacy consultation must, as Foster says, be meaningful

The DUP leader is right to oppose installation of the structures while the consultation is ongoing. It would, as she says, imply the process is a sham.

We now need, as Mrs Foster says, an opportunity to examine comprehensively the said bodies.

The former first minister saw IRA attacks at close hand, so understands the plight of victims.

The consultation process will give us time to ask searching questions of the legacy inquests, agreed at Stormont House as a separate process — nationalists would accept nothing less. But much has changed since 2014. The number and cost of the inquests, most of which are into deaths at the hands of the state and dozens of which relate to the death of terrorists, has risen. There have been alarming projections that the inquests will cost £1m each.

If this happens, the legacy imbalance — already a scandal — will worsen, unless similar sums are spent of the many unsolved murders by terrorists. But that would cost hundreds of millions of pounds, which few people want.

So yes to a consultation process, but one that is meaningful, as Mrs Foster says. If it finds Stormont House will worsen a recent tendency to scrutinise allegations against state to a greater extent than those against terrorists then we trust the powers that be will block its implementation.