Troubles amnesty: Oireachtas committee chairman would back legal action against UK

The chairman of the Oireachtas committee on the Belfast Agreement has indicated he would back calls urging the Government to take legal action against the UK over its plans for legislation on legacy issues in Northern Ireland.

The Oireachtas committee will this week hear calls from the largest Irish-American organisation in the US for the Government in Dublin to consider taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Danny O’Connell, president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians (AOH), said it would be asking members of the Oireachtas committee to recommend that the Government look at such an action.

Committee chairman Fergus O’Dowd of Fine Gael, who along with several of its members will be in Washington this week, said he would back such a move. However, he said it would be a matter for the committee to decide on whether to make such a recommendation.

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Mr O’Dowd said the British plans represented “an amnesty in everything but name” and were opposed by all groups and communities in Northern Ireland with whom the committee had spoken.

Last Friday the Council of Europe flagged serious concerns about the UK government legislation, which would offer immunity to those who co-operated with a new body set up to review killings during the Troubles.

The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill is going through parliament and would bar future inquests and civil cases by families seeking answers about the deaths of their loved ones. Instead it would introduce a new body led by a judicial figure appointed by the UK government, which would review deaths and have the power to grant immunity from prosecution to those who co-operated with it.

The UK government has said the new system would be an improvement and would help to bring closure, but the measure is strongly opposed by victims’ groups and has united unionist and nationalist political parties in their concerns about its potential to shut off access to justice for past killings.

The introduction of the legislation followed a campaign pledge by prime minister Boris Johnson that his administration would end “unfair” prosecutions of British soldiers.

Protocol Bill

The Oireachtas committee will meet senior figures on Capitol Hill in the coming days just as the UK government is expected to introduce legislation to unilaterally override the Northern Ireland protocol.

The Bill is expected to give ministers the power to abolish the protocol’s system of checks on goods moving from Britain to Northern Ireland and to remove the EU’s role in state aid and VAT policy in the North.

Mr Johnson’s envoy on the protocol to Washington, Conor Burns, will also be on Capitol Hill next week to brief politicians on his government’s plans.

Mr O’Connell said his organisation was urging the Irish Government to look at taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights regarding the proposed legacy legislation being considered in the UK parliament.

“The AOH believes the Irish State should consider taking a case to the European Court of Human Rights. We will be meeting the Oireachtas Good Friday agreement chairman and the committee members next week in Washington DC and will be asking the members of that committee to consider recommending that the Irish Attorney General formulate a legal opinion on taking an inter-state case on the current legacy proposal. We don’t believe the UK is listening to the different parties north and south of the Border, and we don’t believe they are interested in a negotiated settlement on the matter.”

“The AOH believes that this legislation, if passed, would breach people’s human rights and that this is a fundamental contravention of the Good Friday agreement.”

The AOH recently initiated a resolution on “legacy justice” issues in the US Congress, introduced by congressman Bill Keating, and attracted the support of more than 50 members of the House of Representatives.