Debate contribution: Legacy: Holding the Irish Government to Account

Debate contribution by Mrs Diane Dodds on 23 September 2025.

MLA

Mrs Diane Dodds

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

23 September 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Legacy: Holding the Irish Government to Account

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5129190

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I beg to move

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Given the events of the past few days, this is a crucial motion, and the Assembly once again has the opportunity to stand with the innocent victims of terrorist violence by supporting it. The DUP will always stand with the innocent victims of terrorism. We record once again our view that there can be no viable process on legacy unless it has access to truth and justice at its heart. Victims of violence have for many years been sidelined, made to feel that they are the pawns of political expediency by successive Governments who have served up prisoner releases and on-the-run letters of comfort. There are even those in the Assembly who have royal pardons in their back pocket. Over recent months, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom have spent their time consulting the Dublin Government on a framework for Troubles legacy issues, but the record of the Dublin Government on the issue of victims and their access to truth and justice is truly lamentable. They refused to extradite IRA criminals so that they could face justice for their crimes in Northern Ireland, and they have failed to provide answers to those who accuse the Irish security forces of collusion with the IRA. I make no apology today for talking about some of those cases. I have spoken many times in the House of the case of Ian Sproule. His family have long suspected the gardaí of passing information to the IRA that resulted in his murder. It was a brutal slaying of a young Protestant and loyalist. As Ian drew up to the family home in Killen, just outside Castlederg, his car was sprayed with bullets. The IRA later phoned the house and told his father to go out to the yard and to look at the mess that it had left. It was his son. There has been no expensive Finucane-style inquiry for him; just a heartbroken family still searching for justice. There have been no answers from the Republic's Government, and the Sinn Féin First Minister says that there was no alternative to such wicked murder and loss. No wonder victims are sickened and angry. I could, of course, mention many others who feel that pain, including the Kingsmills families; the family of Lord Justice Gibson and his wife, who were murdered as they crossed the border; and the Hanna family. Those are all families for whom the truth of collusion with the IRA played a part in their fate. I also acknowledge the families whom the Government of the Republic of Ireland have failed — their own citizens — in their quest for truth and justice. The family of Terence McKeever and of Private Patrick Kelly, who was shot during the rescue of Don Tidey, have raised serious concerns about the lack of a full and proper investigation of their murders by IRA criminals. In a recent 'Belfast Telegraph' article, Private Kelly's son David said:

"we are all invisible in the south."

On 15 August 1998 at 3.10 pm, a bomb explosion ripped through Omagh. Twenty-nine people and two unborn children were killed. Over 200 people were injured. That bomb was built in the Irish state and driven to Northern Ireland. After a long campaign, the Omagh families were finally granted their inquiry, but the memorandum of understanding between the Irish Government and the Omagh bomb inquiry only masquerades as cooperation. It includes no statutory powers, no guarantee of full disclosure from the Irish authorities and no ability to compel witnesses. It is no wonder that some of the Omagh families are deeply disturbed. That same Government have been given a role by Labour in the legacy process. The PM should not trample so lightly on the blood of innocent victims. The Sinn Féin amendment removes the word "innocent" in reference to the victims of terrorism. Are we surprised? Absolutely not. It is a party that is led by someone who talks about there being no alternative to violence and that constantly eulogises IRA terrorists. Some in the party have suggested that it should embrace the criminals and gangsters of the IRA more fully. There is irony at its heart. We recently saw a host of Sinn Féin tributes to the IRA killer and criminal "Bik" McFarlane, who led the attack on the Bayardo bar on the Shankill Road in which five people were killed and over 60 injured. Around that time, the killer "Bik" McFarlane was being remembered and honoured at an event in the Falls park. How can we have a reconciled future for Northern Ireland and our children when murder is treated so lightly and murderers are venerated by political parties? Erasing the word "innocent" blurs the distinction between perpetrator and victim. That is the antithesis of justice, and there can be no workable legacy process in which justice is ignored. We will always stand with the victims of terrorist criminals. A legacy process should have victims at its heart, and the suffering of the innocent should not be airbrushed for political expediency. It is essential that it include the opportunity to hear the stories and voices of innocent victims and to learn about their lives, which were so cruelly taken. We are not interested in the airbrushing of history or the manipulation of the lives of innocent people for political gain. We are not interested in an imperfect opportunity. The lives of the innocent still cry out for truth and justice.

Will the Member give way?

929 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Not flagged

Second assessment

Jev’s answers did not settle this record, so a second model, claude-opus-5-5, read the same text (without the MLA’s name or party) and gave its reasons on 21 October 2026. How the second assessment works

Verdict

Not flagged

Public interest or divisiveness

Mixed

Against the published rubric

The speech moving the motion deals mainly with legacy policy. It criticises the Irish Government's record on extradition and alleged Garda collusion, and says the Omagh inquiry memorandum has "no statutory powers" and "no ability to compel witnesses". These are substantive points that someone on the other side of the argument could engage with. The attacks on one party are tied to specific conduct, such as tributes to a named IRA member and a leader's remarks, rather than to a whole community. Some lines lean towards a competing-victims framing, notably the jibe that there has been "no expensive Finucane-style inquiry" for one victim and the dispute over the word "innocent", but these sit within a legacy argument rather than replacing it.

Public interest or divisiveness

Much of the speech represents named victims' families and scrutinises how far Dublin will cooperate with legacy processes and the Omagh inquiry, which is a genuine public-interest matter. Alongside this, it uses partisan point-scoring on a recognised flashpoint over competing accounts of the Troubles. This includes the remark about "royal pardons in their back pocket" and setting one high-profile inquiry against another family's lack of one, which feeds the communal argument over a hierarchy of victims. Both elements are substantial.

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 13:10 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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