Debate contribution: Police Ombudsman: High Court Ruling

Debate contribution by Mr Gerry Kelly on 19 May 2026.

MLA: Mr Gerry Kelly
Party at the time: Sinn Féin
Date: 19 May 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Matter of the Day
Heading: Police Ombudsman: High Court Ruling
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5549170

Text

It is no surprise where the Member is coming from, given his history, but to deny that there was collusion is completely erroneous. As he said, Mr Justice Scoffield said that the reports should not be withdrawn and should stand but should state that the ombudsman had exceeded her powers. OK, but let us be honest here. Of course, the Member is not being honest: everybody knows that there was collusion. There were debates at the time about whether to call it "collusion" or "collusive behaviour", and it was changed to "collusive behaviour". Call it what you will, there was collusion. It was systemic and state forces — certainly sections of those state forces, including the RUC and Special Branch — were involved in it. That is why the British Government are so intent on doing away with families' and victims' rights. They are trying to do away with the right to inquests. Some people have waited up to five decades for that. If you want to talk about people's rights, let us talk about that. They complain about reinvestigations being in breach of human rights when the other investigations did not fall within human rights legislation. They are against public inquiries. They are against article 2 investigations, as I said. Of course, the Stormont House Agreement of 2014 was agreed by the two Governments and all the parties, including, by the way, the party opposite, which then walked away from that agreement because, in the end, when they saw that it would be fair and equitable, it was not good enough. They did not want anybody who had been in state forces to be brought before the courts. I will just say that 25,000 people went through jail. Let us not talk as if nothing ever happened. I could almost tell you the names of any members of state forces who ended up in jail, all of whom were there for a short time. Returning to collusion and collusive behaviour, let us use the example of the Sean Brown case. The British Government are also against public inquiries. They do not want a inquiry into that case, because at least 25 loyalists were involved and collusion was clearly there. Let us talk about Pat Finucane. It was agreed that there would be a public inquiry into Pat Finucane's case. I was there when it was said by the Prime Ministers of the two Governments in 2001. It has taken from then until now even to be able to have an inquiry into that. Let us deal with the reports that have already been done on that. We now know that over 100 of those who were questioned were working with the state and were in a loyalist organisation, particularly the UDA. Let us not get on our high horse when it comes to this issue.

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

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