Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-199)
MISS MAGGIE
BEIRNE
12 MARCH 2008
Q180 Stephen Pound: It is real pleasure
to see you again. I am sure the Committee joins me in wishing
you every happiness in your early retirement and thank you for
the extremely good work you have done for human rights. Some of
the witnesses who have spoken to us have actually talked about
the idea of an independent replacement both for the Historic Enquiries
Team and the Police Ombudsman. Bearing in mind that in the search
for independence Her Majesty's Government have depopulated whole
provinces of Canada as well as drawing deep on the wells of Finland
and South Africa, do you think there ever could be in the context
of Northern Ireland an independent agency which could deal with
these issues?
Miss Beirne: I think the Police
Ombudsman's Office has established itself as an independent entity.
It is not by virtue of just seeking independence that there will
be problems. Clearly there will be problems in getting people,
getting more powers and so on, but this idea that maybe instead
of an Historic Enquiries Team within the police and the Police
Ombudsman dealing with the past that they be brought together
is something on which CAJ does not actually have a position as
yet. It has been floated on a couple of occasions. There certainly
would be advantages; one can see an immediate advantage to it.
Whether it actually saves you, us any money or whether it makes
any difference to the extent of police time and resources that
will need to be put to the service of that independent mechanism
is another matter. If in fact, since the thrust of my argument
is that we need to look at the past in order to move forward,
if it were a better way of doing it, then it might be a better
use of the money.
Q181 Stephen Pound: On the subject
of a better way, you use a dramatic expression—and I take
it is meant to be—in your evidence when you say "adversarial
highly legalistic remedies are often far from ideal in getting
to the truth". May I ask you the obvious question? If not
that, what?
Miss Beirne: That is what the
Eames/Bradley panel is engaging with now and I know Healing
Through Remembering have done a lot of work in that domain.
Q182 Chairman: We are seeing that.
Miss Beirne: Good; excellent.
They looked at international powers and then came up with four
or five different models. There are some organisations who are
actively canvassing for a Truth Commission and we have not got
to that position yet. We had just said "Here are some of
the principles by which that mechanism should be assessed".
Q183 Stephen Pound: Could you enunciate
the principles you see?
Miss Beirne: Unfortunately they
are those difficult ones you were just alluding to: independence;
transparency; that the mechanism will allow people to comply with
Articles 2 and 3 of the European Convention and Human Rights Act;
that accountability is built in. In the light of the fact that
this debate has become a lot more live and there is a lot more
depth to it, we are going back to our drawing board and trying
to see how those international human rights principles might be
fed into the current process. As an organisation we will be going
beyond that but at the moment those are just the principles we
have laid out. We may have submitted that in earlier testimony,
but I can very easily forward that for the record if that were
relevant to your discussions.
Q184 Stephen Pound: There is a conflict
between mechanisms, outcomes and structures here and we do have
different agencies which sometimes watch over different areas
of control. Do you think that there could be a single integrated
agency, or even a single, integrated approach to address this
issue?
Miss Beirne: My own instinct,
probably speaking more personally than organisationally, is that
you are going to need a whole variety of different mechanisms
but the comprehensive approach is in recognising these and how
they complement each other and there might be different ways of
getting at what people need; the whole issue, for example, of
story telling. For some people that is more crucial than anything
else, that they be heard on what actually happened to them, because
it often did not happen at the time. That is totally separate.
Q185 Stephen Pound: I can see that
the multiplicity of internal mechanisms is entirely appropriate
and I very much take your point. Forgive me for thinking as a
bureaucrat or an apparatchik but do you think one overarching
agency could actually address the issue, instead of having the
Police Ombudsman, instead of having the Historic Enquiries Team
and any others?
Miss Beirne: Possibly you could
have it for dealing with the Historic Enquiries Team and the Police
Ombudsman overlap, because in a sense they both show different
sides of the same problem, but it is quite difficult to imagine
an overall agency for dealing with the past.
Q186 Christopher Fraser: In terms
of the whole issue of how one goes about the business of the past,
how does one encourage former paramilitaries to come forward and
provide information about their actions? Is it going to be possible?
Can we extend the scope of investigations to allow that to happen?
Miss Beirne: This would not be
an area I would be that knowledgeable about. I understand that
was one of the options the Healing Through Remembering
group thought initially, because they have engaged both with former
police, former paramilitaries, a whole variety of people, there
would not be a lot of support for, actually different paramilitary
groups and different institutions almost carrying out an inquiry
into their actions and then putting that into the public domain.
That has secured more sympathy than they had initially expected,
but I do not have any easy answers as to how that would be done.
I am not quite sure how one would approach it. It is really interesting.
Our focus is very much on the state and agencies and the state
and that is proving very difficult, so I would imagine it would
be very difficult to do paramilitary groups as well.
Q187 Christopher Fraser: Is the whole
issue about granting amnesty key to how other countries have dealt
with this issue? Do you see that as being a way forward? Can you
tell us something about the advantages and disadvantages of doing
that?
Miss Beirne: This has come up
twice in the recent past: initially at the time of the agreement
when there was a discussion on what to do about prisoners from
various paramilitary groups; then there was a discussion about
on-the-runs legislation. We have not revisited that more recently
in the light of the current debate. Essentially we looked, as
we always do, for the international standards in this area and
essentially they are not very clear. There is a clear international
standard that you cannot have a blanket immunity, you cannot just
say it does not matter what people did in the past, that is it,
it is over. There are issues around accountability and holding
people to account and how you do that. For example, we did not
engage directly in the issue about the prisoners because we said
they had gone through a trial process on a case-by-case basis,
the legislation proposes a two-year minimum sentence and cases
will be reviewed and they will be let out on a limited licence.
All of those things seem to be safeguards which are built in so
it does not violate the international principle of no blanket
amnesty. With on-the-runs legislation, we were more critical because,
at least in the early drafts, it was clear that Government were
trying to do something which would just close down the past and
we argued for some sort of judicial process and case-by-case analysis.
We will have to look at the individual proposals which come back
from Eames/Bradley about what they are proposing in this instance
and see whether there is more to be added to it.
Q188 Christopher Fraser: In your
opinion are there merits in broadening the scope of the historic
investigations to cover the Republic as well?
Miss Beirne: We restrict ourselves
very much to commenting on Northern Ireland; we do not comment
on either Great Britain or the Republic. I do not know how joint
Garda/PSNI investigations would work because of the different
jurisdictions.
Q189 Christopher Fraser: Possibly.
Miss Beirne: The only problem
is how that would work judicially afterwards.
Q190 Christopher Fraser: Do you have
an opinion on it?
Miss Beirne: Do I have an opinion
on whether inquiries should be extended?
Q191 Christopher Fraser: What is
your opinion about that view?
Miss Beirne: That they investigate
deaths in the Republic?
Q192 Christopher Fraser: Broadening
the scope of investigations to the Republic as well.
Miss Beirne: I do not know that
I have any; we do not have any.
Q193 Kate Hoey: It may seem minor
and pedantic to some of my colleagues but you talk about being
cross-community yet over and over in all your writings and the
bit about Amnesty you talk about either the Northern Irish or
the north of Ireland.
Miss Beirne: Where does it say
North of Ireland?
Q194 Kate Hoey: You talk about the
Northern Irish context in your February newsletter and you talk
about the north of Ireland in the Amnesty one. Why can you not
talk about Northern Ireland? That is what most people use.
Miss Beirne: We always use the
term; that is why I am expressing some surprise.
Q195 Kate Hoey: Your CAJ February
newsletter.
Miss Beirne: Refers to Northern
Ireland.
Q196 Kate Hoey: It talks about the
Northern Irish context.
Miss Beirne: Northern Irish is
the adjective, is it not? May I be clear? We use the term Northern
Ireland. This is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland; it is the UN language for the jurisdiction.
Q197 Chairman: That is something
you have never departed from.
Miss Beirne: No. As an organisation
that is the language we use.
Q198 Mr Campbell: I just want to
raise an accuracy point. In the course of responding to a question
posed by my colleague Sammy Wilson the witness indicated that
I had tabled a motion at the Assembly referring to CAJ. In fact
I had not.
Miss Beirne: At the Bill of Rights
Forum where CAJ was criticised.
Mr Campbell: I am quite happy to be associated
with the comments which were made regarding CAJ but in the interests
of accuracy I did not actually table the motion.
Q199 Chairman: Having had a couple
of clarifications, you did not table a motion and you have never
departed from using the term Northern Ireland.
Miss Beirne: Now I am nervous
when you say "never" since 1981. Someone will bring
out a document in which we do. Our current, and for as long as
I can remember, policy has been to use UN terminology.
Chairman: We accept it. I should like
Mr Wilson to lead on the questions on protecting the anonymity
of covert sources, which is a very important issue.
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