Last November’s deal on resuscitating Northern Ireland’s fractious cross-community Executive may have kept the show on the road, but there was a singular omission. Amid deals on welfare reform and reassurances about the permanent retirement of the Provisional IRA, there was little progress on what is euphemistically called “dealing with the past”.
The legacy of ‘the Troubles’ remains, unsurprisingly, a sore point. Nearly 3,600 people were killed during the period and countless more were maimed, but there is little common ground about how and what is commemorated, remembered or conveniently forgotten. And, crucially, who is brought to book, either legally, or just in moral terms for the deaths and atrocities that occurred.
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