The flawed 2014 Stormont House deal on legacy failed to propose any mechanism to focus on the failures of the Irish state in Troubles

First, the fact that for years, Sinn Fein, for long the political wing of the IRA, has been demanding full implementation of the Stormont House legacy structures. So confident were republicans and their helpers that the legacy plan would destroy security forces who prevented civil war, they demanded their introduction.

The party even began to make it one of their demands for the restoration of a Stormont that a supposedly Conservative and Unionist government allowed them first to collapse, then to keep down until their various red lines were met. Then, sure enough, Julian Smith and Ireland’s deputy prime minister Simon Coveney committed in the Stormont deal to bring forward legislation for these disastrous structures within a short timeframe, despite legacy not being in the talks.

Second, consider Mr Coveney’s comment on yesterday’s revised UK plan: “We would not support a proposal to introduce any special measure or treatment, regarding investigation of state or non-state actors ... victims and survivors have had to wait for far too long for a suitable and effective system in Northern Ireland to deal with the legacy of the Troubles.”

This sort of lecturing from Mr Coveney, to which the UK never responds, is possible by the failure in 2014 to commit to a mechanism for examining the role of the Irish state in facilitating IRA terrorists, refusing to extradite them or take any robust action against them. As a result many people died. Yet Mr Coveney, whose government humiliated the UK by placing legacy cases before the Council of Europe, says such things.

London’s retreat yesterday is welcome. But much is still unclear. Who will be on this single ‘independent’ body and what role will they have in ordering investigations? How will the government rectify the imbalance in non criminal probes, including the vastly expensive legacy inquests at this time of financial and medical crisis? And how will it protect ex RUC from entirely disproportionate scrutiny?