With its quiet patience, diligence and sensitivity, the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains is one of the shining beacons of hope and goodness to have emerged from the pitch-black death-grip of the Troubles.
Its humanity has been a positive but fierce rebuke to the inhumanity of one of the bleakest aspects of our past, namely republican paramilitaries’ depraved practice of abducting, murdering and secretly burying victims.
Together, the targets of this medieval brutality became known as the Disappeared.
For decades, the families left behind all too often felt unable to speak out, their silence wrapped in fear of the consequences that might be visited upon them by the IRA - it was overwhelmingly responsible - if they asked difficult questions or challenged the wicked innuendo that suffocated further inquiry as to the fate of their loved ones.
Being unable to grieve properly in public, denied a traditional wake and the dignity of giving a loved one a proper Christian burial, is a cruelty that cuts profoundly deep in Irish society.
As so often, it took the courage of women to force change. In 1994, with the peace process gathering momentum, Margaret McKinney, the mother of Brian, and then Helen McKendry, the daughter of Jean McConville, started to draw attention to the plight of the Disappeared.
Being unable to grieve properly in public, denied a traditional wake and the dignity of giving a loved one a proper Christian burial, is a cruelty that cuts profoundly deep in Irish society
Others joined and a Families of the Disappeared group formed. In May 1998, just weeks after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the group met with US president Bill Clinton. That was the catalyst for forming the ICLVR, which began its heroic work 25 years ago this week.
The families were focused on being able to give their loved ones a sanctified burial rather than prosecutions, and the governments designed a system to allow those involved to direct the ICLVR to where they had buried their victims.
As our coverage of this important anniversary emphasises, the commission’s task has been Herculean.
Geoff Knupfer, who headed the ICLVR for much of its existence, reflected that the republican movement was supportive because the scandal of the Disappeared was “a big headache for them”.
From an official list of 17 disappeared during the 1970s and early 1980s, the remains of 13 have been found. Jon Hill, who now leads ICLVR investigations, says they remain determined to recover the bodies of Joseph Lynskey, Columba McVeigh, Robert Nairac and Seamus Maguire.
Most recently, several searches for Mr McVeigh in the remote Bragan Bog, near Emyvale in Co Monaghan, have again proven fruitless.
Yet his sister, Dympna Kerr, speaks simply of the powerful hope that the ICLVR has come to embody: “Where would we be if the commission was not here?”
It deserves this community’s deepest gratitude.
