Foster and O’Neill clash over Stormont House Agreement and legacy plans

As well as calling on prime minister Boris Johnson to honour his pledge to veterans, Arlene Foster said the legacy arrangements contained in the Stormont House Agreement should be “revisited”.

Speaking to Sky News, the first minister said the six-year-old agreement is “not acceptable to victims’ groups” or the DUP.

“There needs to be a re-look at the Stormont House Agreement , particularly in relation to the remit of the Historical Investigations Unit, the HIU, which is there to look at historical cases,”

Mrs Foster added: “There is a need to deal with these issues but it has to be done in a way that recognises fairness and recognises what actually happened here in Northern Ireland over 35-40 years, the fact that we did have a terrorist campaign and there were so many innocent victims as a result of that.”

However, Sinn Fein’s Michelle O’Neill said the Stormont House Agreement “must be implemented in full”.

The deputy first minister said: “The British and Irish governments and the political parties, including the DUP, signed up to the Stormont House Agreement to ensure that victims of the conflict could get full disclosure about the killings of their loved ones.

“That agreement must be implemented in full, including the mechanisms for dealing with the legacy of the conflict, and cannot be cherry picked by the British government or the DUP.”

Ms O’Neill added: “I have requested an urgent meeting with the British Secretary of State Julian Smith as I have serious concerns about proposed legislation on victims’ pensions and continued attempts to put British soldiers who murdered Irish citizens above the law.

“The British government appears intent on excluding large sections of our society from accessing pensions and support.

“There is also a very clear attempt to create a hierarchy of victims and to move away from the legal definition of a victim as outlined in the 2006 Victims and Survivors Order. These proposals have caused great hurt over recent days.”

TUV leader Jim Allister said it was “better late than never” for the DUP “to resile from its Stormont House Agreement,” and added: “Innocent victims are very aware that it was only DUP endorsement in 2014 which foisted the hurt of these unbalanced proposals upon them.

“Unpicking these Sinn Fein supported proposals would never have been necessary but for the foolhardy folly of the DUP in the first place. Hence, now the heavy burden on Mrs Foster’s party to undo the wrong they embraced. An apology to innocent victims would be a good start.”

Kenny Donaldson of Innocent Victims United said the wider IVU family firmly believes that previously investigated former security force members should not face “continued persecution”.

Mr Donaldson said: “We are clear that where lawful investigations have previously taken place concerning allegations of criminality by a former member of the security forces and which have found that individual to have no case to answer, that there should not be a means provided for the continued persecution of such individuals.

“However we are also clear that where evidence exists of criminal based activity that former members of the security forces should be held accountable as should those involved in terrorist organisations who since 1998 have benefited to a large degree from the subversion of the criminal justice system by the political process”.

Mr Donaldson added: “We welcome Arlene Foster’s most recent comments on The Stormont House Agreement, she is correct that there does not exists support for these structures from the broad innocents victims/survivors of terrorism community. As a structure the HIU is unsustainable.

“Our constituency of victims/survivors will not be railroaded into the acceptance of a legacy process which is entirely inwards facing upon the UK state and which fails to hold terrorism and the Republic of Ireland state accountable for their actions and also inactions over the years of the terrorist campaign,”