Letter: Some advice for new Northern Ireland secretary Chris Bryant on legacy - stop allowing the Irish government to run rings around the NIO

My own dealings with Hilary Benn showed him to be a man genuinely interested in Northern Ireland and its people, and one who worked hard to build relationships across society. However, in many respects, his tenure proved superficial, as many of his promises ultimately went undelivered.

The most obvious example is legacy. Labour entered government under the banner of ‘repeal and replace’, yet progress remains mired in division and has become bogged down in the familiar trenches of division at Westminster and Stormont.

The veterans' community was misled by a new legacy framework that, despite repeated assurances from the secretary of state, effectively created an equivalence between those who upheld the rule of law and those who sought to undermine it through terrorism.

At the same time, the government has pursued a legacy approach that appears increasingly shaped by the demands of Dublin. The Irish government has succeeded in exerting considerable influence over the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) without making any meaningful reciprocal effort to address legacy issues on its own jurisdiction. Throughout this process, Hilary Benn offered little challenge.

The contrast is stark. The UK government is establishing a range of legacy mechanisms, including the Legacy Commission, the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval (ICIR), full criminal investigations, the reinstatement of Troubles-related inquests, and inquiries linked to the coronial process, all designed to be ECHR compliant.

By comparison, the Irish government has established a Garda Legacy Unit that will not conduct Troubles-related investigations and will only provide information to the Legacy Commission after it has been redacted.

Despite this clear imbalance, victims have been told that this represents a fair and comprehensive approach. Yet what of those victims who were kidnapped in Northern Ireland, taken across the border, tortured, and murdered? What of those who were murdered or seriously injured by terrorists who used the Republic of Ireland as a base of operations and a safe haven? For many of these victims and their families, justice remains elusive.

Equally telling was Hilary Benn's failure to call for a reciprocal public inquiry in the Republic of Ireland into the Omagh bombing. His reluctance to challenge Ireland over its interstate case against the UK suggested a greater priority on maintaining cordial relations with Dublin than on standing up for UK citizens who suffered during a terrorist campaign.

That campaign was facilitated, in part, by the failure of successive Irish governments to extradite suspected terrorists and to adequately prevent terrorists from crossing the border to attack innocent civilians.

My advice to the new secretary of state on legacy is simple and practical.

First, be honest. There can be no moral equivalence between terrorists and the forces of law and order.

Second, stop allowing the Irish government to run rings around the NIO. If Ireland is unwilling to replicate, at least in part, the legacy mechanisms being established in the UK, and if it refuses to withdraw its interstate case, then the UK government should seriously consider initiating its own interstate case regarding Ireland's failure to conduct Article 2-compliant investigations into the murders of UK citizens on Irish soil.

Only when both governments are prepared to apply the same standards to themselves can victims have any confidence that legacy is being pursued fairly and impartially.

Doug Beattie, Unionist MLA for Upper Bann