THE BRITISH Government had gone to great lengths to ensure the Bloody Sunday inquiry report was published “in a sober and considered manner”, the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Owen Paterson said in Dublin yesterday.
In a joint news conference at Iveagh House with Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin, the Northern Secretary said he hoped the report, to be published on June 15th, would bring closure to the issue.
“I said on day one that I wanted to see the Saville Inquiry report published as soon as possible. This report is 5,000 pages long, it has cost £191 million and I said I wanted it published in a manner that it was considered with the real seriousness that it deserved,’’ he said.
He did not want to go into the detail of the arrangements: “Although I went to Derry Guildhall and saw the families and two local MPs, Mark Durkan and Martin McGuinness last Thursday [and] I went through some detail with them, I’ve yet to see the soldiers and their representatives.
“But I have gone to great lengths and worked very closely with officials, we’ve looked at every possible angle, to make sure this report is published in a sober and considered manner.”
The British prime minister will make a statement to parliament at 3.30pm on Tuesday, June 15th, “and this enormous report will be available for general consideration after that”, he added.
“And we then propose to allow everyone to read it through the summer and then to return to parliament sometime in the autumn, probably end of October/early November, and have a full day’s adjournment debate to give it the serious consideration that it deserves.”
He had not read the report – “no-one has read it” – but he hoped it would bring closure to the issue.
“It’s hard to think that a government could have gone to greater lengths to try to get to the bottom of this tragic event than to spend this enormous sum of money [and] I think 20 to 30 million words being bandied around as the volume of evidence.”
Mr Martin said he welcomed the engagement of Mr Paterson with the families. “There has been very detailed work by Owen and indeed by his predecessor Shaun Woodward with the families and with the public representatives who have been working with the families. This has been a major piece of work in itself and it will require detailed and considered reflection, given the enormity of the publication.
“And I think, at the time of publication, it’s important that people would give it that detailed consideration and reflect significantly on the content of the report so that there wouldn’t be immediate rushes to judgment but that people would give it the consideration it requires, given the length of time that it has taken and the enormous inputs from all sides.”
Asked about his plans to reduce the dependence of Northern Ireland on public spending, Mr Paterson said he was operating on a timescale of 25 years. There were “some very real lessons” to be learned from the Republic on promoting the private sector.
“That will take time: I have suggested that will take about 25 years to rebalance the economy. Now some business people are saying that is unacceptably slow: I think I’m being cold and realistic, but I think we need a concerted campaign to help build on the private sector in Northern Ireland, build it up and steadily reduce the dependence on public spending,” Mr Paterson said.