Member's statement: Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery
Member's statement by Mr Mike Nesbitt on .
- MLA
- Mr Mike Nesbitt
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 30 April 2024
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4486733
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I was listening carefully to Mr McGrath and Mrs Dillon. Mr McGrath made a point about our shocking rates of poor mental health compared with those in England, Scotland and Wales. A fact that we can all agree on is that that is a legacy issue. If you were to take a map of Troubles hotspots, measured by bombs, shootings and murders, and then take a contemporaneous map of hotspots for poor mental health, measured by attempted and completed suicides, drug abuse and alcohol abuse, you would basically have a match. We need to do more about mental health. Linda Dillon made the point that, unusually, there was universal condemnation and rejection of the Legacy Act. Yet tomorrow, the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) will come into being. It will effectively become the only show in town. Rightly or wrongly, that is the position that we are in, and it is up to the ICRIR to prove to us that it is worthy of our support. The two things overlap: people's poor mental health and well-being may be a direct consequence of failure to secure truth, justice and acknowledgement for their loved ones. As a former victims' commissioner, I can testify that we have not done particularly well by victims and survivors, over the years. They had a reasonable expectation that, the moment that they were injured or lost a loved one, the agencies of the state would form a circle of wagons around them and that they would get whatever they needed, be that a bit of shopping, having the children taken to and collected from school or some cash. Those things did not happen. For some reason, I am minded of a widow whose husband was murdered. She was left with a farm, a herd of milking cows, a slurry tank and two toddlers — the last two being a potentially fatal mix. She had to milk the cows every day, and there was nobody to help her. How did she keep the children safe and away from the slurry tank? She got two tractor tyres and piled one on top of the other to create a prison cell into which she placed her two toddlers while she milked her cows, because nobody was there to help. I do not know what the ICRIR will achieve, but there is a lot of pressure on it, because victims and survivors deserve truth, justice and acknowledgement.
409 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.10 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.78).
- No identity-based framing was identified (0.99).
- Subject area: Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism.
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.06 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.03 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.02 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.03 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.06 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.78 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.10 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 0.99 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.01 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| Legacy of the Troubles, victims and paramilitarism | 0.97 |
| Disability (including neurodivergence and mental health), disabled people and disability or sickness benefits | 0.02 |
| No identity-related subject | 0.01 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
| Parades, bonfires and commemorations | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:01 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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