Stormont House Agreement academics will update MPs

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee will hear from academics who drafted a Model Bill for implementing the controversial Stormont House Agreement (SHA), as part of committee scrutiny of the government’s own Draft Bill.
By The Newsroom
Published 4th Sep 2019, 11:15 BST
QUB Professor of Law Louise MallinderQUB Professor of Law Louise Mallinder
QUB Professor of Law Louise Mallinder

The session, tomorrow morning, will look at how the draft bill addresses the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past and NIO progress on introducing the legislation to Parliament.

The witnesses will be the drafting committee of academics who produced a ‘Model Bill’ for the implementation of the SHA in 2016. The session will cover whether the proposals in the Draft SHA Bill can effectively achieve their stated aims, how the Draft Bill can progress in the continued absence of Stormont and also the remit, powers and duties of the proposed Historical Investigations Unit, which would look at Troubles deaths.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The academics are Louise Mallinder Professor of Law Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), Kieran McEvoy, Professor of Law and Transitional Justice, QUB and Daniel Holder, deputy director, Committee on the Administration of Justice and member of the Model Bill Team.

The SHA was agreed by NI political parties, and the UK and Irish governments in 2014. It establishes a framework for dealing with the Troubles legacy. But the Ulster Unionist Party says it will never support those structures, and the News Letter Stop The Legacy Scandal series included essays by academics, politicians, lawyers, ex security forces and commentators who fear the SHA structures will help a terrorist narrative.