Yet more public cash to be spent on an inquest into Army shootings, on top of the many millions spent on legacy probes into state killings

The vast sums of money due to be spent on legacy inquests were a scandal even before Covid.

In the aftermath of a pandemic that has almost bankrupted the nation, they will be a disgrace of monumental proportions.

It emerged yesterday that yet another inquest is to be heard, this time into the shooting of six men by the Army in 1973, several of them terrorists.

The bulk of legacy inquests relate to deaths in which the security forces are implicated, yet such forces carried out 10% of Troubles killings, the great majority of which were legal. The inquest into what republicans call the Ballymurphy Massacre was a massive public inquiry, with multiple QCs.

Where are the inquiries into the many IRA massacres?

No plan for such a probe was agreed at Stormont House in 2014. No process was agreed to examine how the Irish state allowed itself to be a safe haven for the IRA, a process that should have included an estimate of how many people who died as a result of Dublin’s inaction — which persisted after the Anglo Irish Agreement betrayal, when London foolishly thought Ireland would get tough with its terrorists.

The UK government could yet launch a detailed study into the legacy imbalance, and the reasons why, for example, IRA leaders have for decades escaped serious jail terms for their decades of murder while lowly soldiers face murder trials.

So far London has been weak, apologetic and has allowed itself to be lectured by the NI Affairs Committee on legacy, and so the way we investigate the past has continued to be grossly uneven.

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