{"id":2914,"date":"2016-11-28T17:59:46","date_gmt":"2016-11-28T17:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/?p=2914"},"modified":"2016-11-28T17:59:46","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T17:59:46","slug":"sean-crowe-td-challenges-brokenshire-on-legacy-issues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/sean-crowe-td-challenges-brokenshire-on-legacy-issues\/","title":{"rendered":"Se\u00e1n Crowe TD challenges Brokenshire on Legacy Issues"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sinn F\u00e9in TD Se\u00e1n Crowe has challenged the British Government’s Secretary for Northern Ireland James Brokenshire on his assertion that inquiries into legacy issues arising from the conflict in the north should be time-limited because current inquiries are too slow, cumbersome,not delivering,not balanced and one sided.<\/p>\n

Mr Brokenshire made his comments at a sitting of the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly taking place in Cardiff today.<\/p>\n

Deputy Crowe, who is Chair of the All Party Oireactas Committe on Victims, and who was in attendance, said;<\/p>\n

“I agree with British Secretary Brokenshire’s remarks that inquiries into legacy issues arising out of the conflict in the north are not delivering for victims or their families, and that they are both slow and\u00a0 cumbersome.<\/p>\n

\u201c I am in no doubt that many of the victims’ families, including those of the Dublin and Monaghan bomb victims, who have been looking for decades for British files to be released would agree with these words.<\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, the figleaf of security consideration is all prevailing when it comes to the British government’s approach to dealing with the past and when it comes to victims and their families<\/p>\n

\u201cThe blocking of the processes involved, through the use of a ‘national security’ veto, is central to this problem. It is a handy, ready-made and deliberately false justification for criticising, and undermining, the value of such inquiries.<\/p>\n

“James Brokenshire should uphold his obligations by addressing the requirements of the North’s Lord Chief Justice’s five-year plan to clear the backlog in\u00a0legacy\u00a0inquests.<\/p>\n

“The slow and cumbersome nature of the\u00a0inquiries, as well as the\u00a0failure to produce\u00a0satisfactory\u00a0results, is due to British political\u00a0manoeuvring rather than\u00a0any procedural\u00a0deficiencies. The British government and Mr Brokenshire must accept\u00a0responsibility for this matter and work on improving their engagement with the inquiries.<\/p>\n

Deputy Crowe also questioned Mr Brokenshire’s specific call for “time limited” inquiries and queried his remarks in relation to a lack of balance when it comes to inquiries. He said;<\/p>\n

\u201cMr Brokenshire was critical in his speech today and called for more balance in the electing of legacy cases to be investigated and suggested that the British state were involved in a minority of killings during the conflict. Aside from disagreeing with his narrative, what message he is\u00a0 sending\u00a0 to victims and their\u00a0 families today? Is he trying to say that victims of State violence should step aside and drop their cases or\u00a0 that their pain and their cases are somehow less relevent?<\/p>\n

“It is extremely worrying that the British\u00a0 Secretary is suggesting that inquiries, established to uncover the truth and aid in the cementing of peace in Ireland, should be limited in their duration. The obvious and immediate criticism is that such a stipulation would open the door to further whitewashed\u00a0inquiries by way of simply\u00a0waiting it out.<\/p>\n

“I\u00a0don’t believe that such a development would advance the purpose of historical inquiries, which is to provide victims, relatives and communities with some closure by unearthing the truth and by bringing those responsible to justice.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n

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Sinn F\u00e9in TD Se\u00e1n Crowe has challenged the British Government’s Secretary for Northern Ireland James Brokenshire on his assertion that inquiries into legacy issues arising from the conflict in the north should be time-limited because current inquiries are too slow, cumbersome,not delivering,not balanced and one sided. Mr Brokenshire made his comments at a sitting of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2915,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2914\/revisions\/2915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}