IRC paramilitary watchdog report for Northern Ireland: 2024/25 is first year since 1969 with no Troubles related deaths
The latest terrorist watchdog report has found that 2024/25 is the first year since 1969 in which there were no Troubles related deaths in Northern Ireland.
The eight report of the Independent Reporting Commission (IRC) noted that, despite the Good Friday Agreement being signed 27 years ago, this year marks the first since 1969 where there were "no security related deaths".
The publication of the report - which promotes state support to help terror groups disband - prompted one academic to contrast NI’s approach of "appeasing" terror groups to the Spanish approach with ETA.
In its latest report the IRC reaffirmed “the need to explore engagement with paramilitary groups with a view to bringing about their transition to disbandment".
But victims campaigner Dr Ken Funston challenged the IRC approach.
"What I glean from the latest IRC report is that we are still pandering to paramilitaries and giving them substantial funds to appease them," he said. "Whether that is to ex-prisoner groups or so-called community groups - both loyalist and republican.
"But if we look at the parallel situation in Spain, successive governments refused to grant any of ETAs political demands. The Spanish were determined not to make the mistakes of the Blair government after the 1998 Belfast agreement; 27 years on we are still caught in this endless trap of rewarding terrorists for no longer killing us.”
A TUV spokesman said the IRC was created “out of the political crisis caused by the IRA murder of Kevin McGuigan” in 2015, but that the body still has not examined the killing.
The TUV also claimed the appointment of an IRC-approved independent interlocutor to explore engaging with terror groups “amounts in practice to furnishing terrorist organisations with a nursemaid rather than insisting that they are dismantled and disarmed”.
But UUP MLA Doug Beattie said that it was clear from the report "that the terrorists are on the back foot" due to hard work by security forces. He said the appointment of the independent interlocutor to engage with terror groups is “a positive step”, but said it will only work with a criminal justice response and by ending prison paramilitary regimes.