Several years ago, Sinn Féin established "Community Restorative Justice" (CRJ). Its director of training, Harry Maguire, is one of the convicted murderers of two British army corporals at the time of an IRA funeral. Recently, having witnessed the beating of a nationalist, Jeff Commander, by a bunch of republican thugs, he failed to give evidence of this attack to the police in accordance with his duty under Northern Ireland law, writes Garret FitzGerald
In 2004, Sinn Féin's Caitríona Ruane made it quite explicit in the Mourne Observer that the local CRJ groups then being established were being set up by her party "to offer a viable alternative to the PSNI". These local groups refuse to deal with the PSNI and leaflets issued by some of them show that half of those involved in their operation are former active members of the IRA.
Several nationalist families have reported that CRJ members have been involved with the IRA in attempts to intimidate family members into leaving Northern Ireland. Moreover, Eileen Calder, of the Rape Crisis Centre, has stated that the CRJ has "threatened women and attempted to cover up crimes committed by those with IRA, Sinn Féin or CRJ connections. Allowing such people power is like letting the lunatics run the asylum."
Marie Brown, of Foyle Women's Aid, says CRJ has stated that it would refer cases to her organisation only if it agreed not to involve the police. Finally, the McCartney sisters have told MPS at Westminster that people associated with the murder of their brother are involved in CRJ schemes and that the CRJ is a paramilitary front, used to intimidate the local population and to protect criminals with an IRA background.
In the light of that record one would have expected that the British government would have tried to protect the nationalist people of Northern Ireland from a Sinn Féin attempt to maintain control of many areas by replacing the IRA with what is seen by many nationalists as a new kind of vigilantism. Instead, astonishingly, the British government has persistently attempted to facilitate, and appears also to contemplate financing, Sinn Féin's CRJ groups in developing their alternative "policing" system.
Last year, when preparing draft guidelines for restorative justice groups, the British chose to consult only the two Sinn Féin and loyalist organisations which have set up such local committees - completely ignoring both the constitutional political parties and the Policing Board.
Then, when the draft guidelines deriving from this carefully-skewed process were issued last December 5th, they were found to have omitted any provision for regulation of these committees or for an independent complaints procedure. Specific provision was also made to exempt local CRJ groups from working with the police, by providing that they could choose instead to deal with the Probation Board for Northern Ireland or the Youth Justice Agency. When the PSNI raised this with the Northern Ireland Office, they were effectively told not to object to these proposed arrangements.
All Northern Ireland parties other than Sinn Féin and the Irish Government strongly opposed these grossly defective guidelines, with the SDLP publicly leading the opposition. The Irish Government's concern is both with the protection of Northern nationalists from further republican intimidation and with the danger for our State of the emergence of "alternative policing" by Sinn Féin in Border areas, where smuggling by former IRA activists remains a major problem.
Last Tuesday, revised guidelines, now described as a "protocol", were published by the British government, apparently reversing an earlier decision to postpone their publication. But a further 12-week consultation period has also been announced.
Three changes have been made in the earlier guidelines.
The first of these involves dropping the earlier provision that would have allowed Sinn Féin's CRJ committees to deal with the Probation or Youth Justice services instead of the PSNI. Now, where a CRJ committee becomes aware of an offence or an offender, it will be required to "communicate promptly to a dedicated police [ officer] all such information on the matter as the PSNI may require". This wording has, however, been most carefully designed not to require any co-operation with the police beyond the sending of a written communication. No doubt the British feel Sinn Féin will be willing to accept this as the price of securing government finance for these CRJ groups.
Next there is to be "an independent, external, complaints procedure", to be provided by the Probation Board, and it is stated that the accreditation of these schemes will depend upon the effectiveness of these local committees in dealing with complaints. But Sinn Féin will not be worried by this because the British proposal involves a non-statutory body without the kind of investigatory powers possessed by the Police Ombudsman.
Third, to help determine the suitability of people staffing these schemes, a panel is to be established, comprising representatives of statutory bodies. However, the terms of reference for this vetting process have been specifically designed to permit people who committed arrestable offences prior to 1998, or who have been released from a prison sentence more than three years previously, to be nominated as staff members of restorative justice committees.
In other words, this vetting process is designed to enable local IRA activists to continue in a new guise their past intimidation of local communities, whose leaders are currently afraid to speak out against what the British government is now seeking to impose on their areas.
This deeply worrying feature of the proposed vetting system explains why the PSNI is reported to be relieved not to be involved in this process, and it also explains the refusal by the Policing Board of Northern Ireland to nominate representatives to serve on the proposed panel to vet staff members of these committees. The board's view is stated to be that the proposed vetting procedures are "not sufficiently robust", which is frankly alarming.
It is now clear that, against the interests and wishes of the people of this island, nationalist and unionist alike, Tony Blair did some private deal on this matter with Provisional Sinn féin - presumably with the naïve idea of providing some kind of "occupational therapy" for the hard men of the IRA.
Neither the Irish Government nor the British parliament have been parties to this, and it is up to them now to take action appropriate to their different roles so as to ensure that, at the end of the further 12-week consultative period, this highly-dangerous proposal, for what Sinn Féin has itself described as an alternative to the PSNI, is firmly blocked.
For 35 years Irish governments have never hesitated to defend the rights of Northern nationalists from abuses - whether by unionist politicians or repressive state actions, or by IRA or loyalist paramilitaries. If, as the unacceptable terms of this revised protocol now suggest, our Government's private representations on this matter have failed, its duty is to make it clear publicly that the installation of what is effectively a Sinn Féin policing structure in nationalist areas of the North, including areas near the border of our State, is unacceptable to it.