The ICRIR is the best chance since 1998 to tackle the legacy of Northern Ireland’s Troubles/Conflict.
Every single person who wants to build a shared and reconciled future should help us shape this moment of opportunity.
When I grew up in the north of England in the 1970s, three generations of my family including my brothers had worked nine miles underground out in the North Sea as coalminers in the pits, equipped with little more than the symbolic safety of a hard hat and the drive to put food on the family’s table.
For the past eight years, along with courageous colleagues in Operation Kenova, I’ve been walking four decades back in time under the surface of Northern Ireland’s Troubles/conflict, equipped with the powers of a police detective and the determination to seek unvarnished truths about all wrongdoing.
Ironically, despite our different careers, my family and I all ended up working at the coalface.
As chief investigator for Kenova, led by Jon Boutcher (now PSNI chief constable), I independently investigated some of the most appalling cycles of murder ever seen on these islands and some of the darkest episodes of the Troubles/conflict, particularly the Stakeknife agenda.
In Kenova, we didn’t take no for an answer. When we were told forensics had been destroyed, we searched police stations, ferreted through labs and boxes, went wherever we had to go. We did whatever we had to do, to find the truth.
Even then, with all that doggedness, information was still being recovered recently from state agencies. Sometimes, that’s the reality of investigations 40 years later. But while state agencies have cooperated - often imperfectly, paramilitaries have hidden away their truths in plain sight.
It was the victims, survivors and families who kept Kenova completely focussed on getting the answers they were desperate to find. That’s the resilience, determination and experience that I bring into the independent Commission.
I joined in March this year, all too aware of the weaknesses in the Legacy Act. The appeal court found parts of that law incompatible with human rights.
Despite that, the commission has still evolved at an incredible pace, with creativity and commitment. And we’ve had the advantage of incorporating key elements that worked successfully at Kenova while, at the same time, launching innovative new approaches.
We have some way to go on this journey but within an evolving political and legal landscape, I am determined to shape this into something we can be proud of and that victims, survivors and families can rely on.
The appeal court found that we have a robust suite of investigatory, disclosure and police powers – similar to PSNI or the police ombudsman.
And we are committed to using them. As with Kenova, I am going after the ‘unvarnished truth’ - not just in Northern Ireland but across these islands.
We’re already working diligently within the legislation, and that will only intensify when final reforms are reality.
More than 100 people have already put their trust and confidence in this commission.
We are here to serve them, and the many others whom we expect to come forward seeking answers. Their rights and choices deserve respect, just as others’ choices may differ for now.
There are no guarantees with the independent commission. I understand the hurt and heartache. I’ve sat in living rooms and court rooms alongside victims, survivors and families. I know them personally.
I understand the impatience for delivery created by two decades of false hope. Some people are meeting investigators for the fourth or fifth time. We will have to earn people’s trust.
But I also know, from 36 years of professional policing that thousands of incidents cannot be effectively addressed in six months of a commission operating. Everyone needs to be more honest, about the past – and the present.
Tales of personal legacy shape the story of social history. There are no blank pages, no full stops, no easy truths, no simple clean breaks from the lived experience of conflict. The best we can each do is translate our past into transformed futures for those generations who follow us. That is my commitment.