Jim Allister questions the appointment of Baroness Nuala O'Loan to Pat Finucane public inquiry

The North Antrim MLA said it raised questions of “perceived impartiality”.

The former Police Ombudsman, speaking in the Lords in 2015, said that the arguments against a public inquiry into the killing are “not even persuasive, let alone convincing”.

"It is now common knowledge that many other people died at the hands of terrorists because of the involvement of state agents in one way or another in these murders and the protection of those who committed them,” she said.

In 2020, she told the Lords “such criminal activity by agents of the state, and the failure by the state to prevent and investigate crime impartially and effectively, is very damaging to the whole criminal justice system”.

Mr Allister said he had written to the Northern Ireland Secretary to object to her appointment, saying that he was “not questioning Baroness O’Loan’s professionalism”, but that this was “not the case for her”.

Mr Allister said she has been “personally and publicly invested in the Finucane case for nearly two decades,” going back to her time as ombudsman, and had been an “advocate for the very process she has now been appointed to help direct”.

She had “already formed a view on… the alleged failures of state agencies” he said, adding: “To now place her in a formal advisory role – after so many years of active and vocal involvement – compromises the credibility of the inquiry before it has even begun. This is not a matter of legal competence, but of perceived impartiality, which is essential if justice is to be seen to be done.”

An inquiry spokesman said the appointment was down to the Northern Ireland Secretary, and that the baroness “will bring a great breadth and depth of experience to this inquiry,” adding: “A protocol will be developed to govern how the assessors work with the inquiry and this will be published in due course.”