Stop point-scoring over Omagh bomb probe, QUB academic tells politicians

Liam Tunney, Belfast Telegraph, March 5th, 2025

Elected representatives should avoid politicising the Omagh Bombing Inquiry amid calls for the Irish Government to hold a parallel probe into the atrocity, an academic has said.

The Real IRA attack killed 29 people and two unborn twins on August 15, 1998.

The inquiry is investigating whether the blast could have been prevented.

Last week DUP leader Gavin Robinson and fellow MP Jim Shannon urged Dublin to launch its own probe.

A memorandum of understanding between the Irish Government and the inquiry could be signed this month.

Queen's University political lecturer Dr Peter McLoughlin said politicians needed to be careful about how they framed calls for co-operation.

“You would like to think our elected politicians are interested in making sure there is justice for everybody concerned,” he said.

“But unfortunately in Northern Ireland, everything is politicised.

“Historically, unionists have seen the Republic of Ireland as a sanctuary for Irish republican paramilitaries. You can imagine there is still an element of that politics at play, and it can be the same in the way republicans talk about the British security services.

“There is still that legacy of politicising these issues for political gain, which is probably unhelpful. We do need to be careful and remember that there is a political mind in what politicians say and do.

“We would like to think the legal experts involved are not politicised and are given the access and resources they need to deliver justice.”

Significant evidence of failings on both sides of Border

Dr McLoughlin said the Irish Government does have questions to answer over what happened, given the failings in the Garda investigation into Colm Murphy, who was found liable in a civil court in 2013 for the blast.

Murphy was jailed in 2002 after being found guilty at Dublin Special Criminal Court of conspiracy to cause the bombing.

But he was cleared eight years later after a retrial found interview evidence was inadmissible.

“There is significant evidence and arguments that suggest there were failings in both jurisdictions,” added Dr McLoughlin.

“There is a strong Republic of Ireland dimension.

“The attack was instigated in the Republic, the bomb was created there and the perpetrators fled back to the Republic.

“It was an atrocity that had an all-Ireland dimension and therefore if you are investigating failings, you really need that dual approach.”

It comes after the DUP leader voiced fears a lack of co-operation from Dublin could leave the inquiry unable to establish the truth.

Dr McLoughlin said the comments were “pre-emptive”, but said such an outcome would be “significant”.

He added: “That would raise questions over why evidence was withheld that effectively made the Northern Ireland inquiry redundant.

“We hope it doesn't come to that, but I think that would be a pretty shocking conclusion.

“There can be good reasons why state authorities do withhold evidence — it's one of the fundamental paradoxes for any democratic state that security agencies, intelligence agencies, police, have to act with a certain amount of secrecy.

“But if you can't get to the full truth, it's not going to be satisfactory for the families.”

Ombudsman asked if Troubles reports will be impacted by High Court ruling in ‘collusion’ case

By Connla Young, Crime and Security Correspondent, Irish News, March 05th, 2025

The Police Ombudsman has been urged to clarify if a controversial court ruling will impact on the publication of major Troubles investigations ahead of a fresh legacy deadline.

Concerns have been raised after the High Court last month found the Police Ombudsman exceeded her legal powers in making findings of collusive behaviour by RUC officers in a series of loyalist killings.

Marie Anderson’s office is set to appeal the ruling.

The introduction of the Legacy Act on May 1st, last year halted inquests, ended civil cases and attempted to introduce conditional immunities.

Before Christmas the British government started the process of scrapping conditional immunity, restoring civil actions and reinstating inquests halted by the Act.

It intends to retain the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR), which many impacted by the Troubles are opposed to.

The Act, which has faced widespread opposition, also brought the shutters down on hundreds of Police Ombudsman investigations.

However, under the legislation the ombudsman is permitted to produce reports in cases where the ‘investigation phase’ was completed before the May 1 deadline.

Last year Ms Anderson’s office confirmed she was aiming to conclude 95 Troubles related cases “under Legacy transitional arrangements” by April 30 this year.

At the time it emerged the office intended to complete 18 investigations, which cover the deaths of more than 160 people.

Some of those investigations focus on attacks carried out by both loyalists and republicans, including Operation Newham, which has examined at the activities of the notorious Glenanne Gang.

Comprising members of the RUC, UDR and UVF, it is thought to have been responsible for around 120 murders.

Operation Abundance

The Ombudsman’s office is also working on Operation Abundance, which is linked to the activities of the British agent known as Stakeknife.

Solicitor Kevin Winters, of KRW Law, recently wrote to the ombudsman asking if the outworkings of the recent court ruling will impinge on the investigations.

Mr Winters has also asked if the time scale for the publication of the respective reports will be impacted by the court ruling.

The lawyer said families deserve answers.

“Between Abundance and Newham we have over 40 families affected by a possible delay in the release of PONI reports,” he said.

“Those families deserve to know right now if there’s going to be any further delay.

“They’ve waited long enough.”

It is not known how many of the 18 investigations that beat last year’s deadline will now be concluded.

The Police Ombudsman was contacted.

Meanwhile, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has called for the Legacy Act to be repealed.

While the Labour administration has already promised to repeal and replace the legislation, no details have been made public.

The Committee on the Administration of Justice welcomed the call.

“The Legacy Act must be scrapped and replaced with independent, transparent mechanisms with genuine powers of investigative to deliver truth and accountability for victims and their families,” it said.

And on the future outlook for this island are the following findings in latest release of Arins/Irish Times poll findings see below…

Southern voters reject powers for unionists in united Ireland

Pat Leahy, Political Editor, Irish Times, March 6th, 2025

But Northern voters want party from British unionist background in Government

Protestants in Northern Ireland want special arrangements to guarantee a share of power if there is a united Ireland but this is opposed by voters in the Republic.

This is according to the latest findings from a major research project on attitudes to a possible unification and related issues.

A majority of respondents in Northern Ireland (56 per cent), including an overwhelming majority of voters from a Protestant background (73 per cent), want to see specific rules in a possible future united Ireland that would require the Government to include a party from a British unionist background.

But voters in the south are against this by a margin of almost two to one.

More than seven in 10 voters from a Protestant background in the North (71 per cent) agree that at least two of the 15 Cabinet ministers should be allocated to a unionist party in a future all-Ireland government, with more than half (53 per cent) of all Northern voters supporting the idea.

But the South says no: just 29 per cent agree, with 45 per cent disagreeing (16 per cent neither agree nor disagree).

Protestant voters in Northern Ireland also want unionists in the Government of a united Ireland to have the power to veto proposed legislation which they believe would “harm a fundamental interest or right of people in the island who identify as British or unionist”.

But less than one-in-five voters in the Republic (18 per cent) support this idea, with 52 per cent opposed.

Participants in the surveys were presented with a number of options for how governments might be constructed, if referendums on unity in both parts of the island were to be passed in the future.

They included: an extension of the current southern model; an extension of the current northern model; an “inclusive coalition” model (where all parties that passed a minimum threshold of seats have a right to be part of the Government); the “quota” model, where two Cabinet seats would be reserved for unionists; and the “territorial” model, which would guarantee parties from Northern Ireland would have representation in Government.

Stormont Option is least unpopular

No option is universally popular. However, the “inclusive coalition” – which could mean a Government comprised of several southern and northern parties, nationalist and unionist – was the least unpopular.

That finding was reinforced by the deliberative forums – managed discussions among a group – conducted to examine the issue.

The findings are part of the North and South research project for which two simultaneous opinion polls were conducted each year for the past three years. Each poll was conducted by Ipsos – Ipsos Northern Ireland in the North and Ipsos B&A in the South – and surveyed more than 1,000 voters at multiple points across both jurisdictions.

In addition, two deliberative forums were held this year, one in each jurisdiction, to allow selected participants to discuss the constitutional issue and related questions in a structured setting. The surveys and deliberative forums took place in the second half of 2024.

The North and South project is a collaboration between The Irish Times and the ARINS Project. ARINS – Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South – is a joint project of the Royal Irish Academy and the University of Notre Dame in the United States.

The ARINS/Irish Times project aims to provide independent and unbiased information on the state of public opinion in both jurisdictions on the constitutional future of the island, on what influences the views of people, how they might change in the future and what a united Ireland – if it were ever to happen – might look like.

Five possible models for governing a united Ireland

John Garry, Brendan O’Leary, Jamie Pow and Dawn Walsh, Irish Times, March 6th, 2025

Redesigning the core executive of a government will always be controversial among democratic politicians and it is internationally rare to invite unelected samples of the public to consider complex constitutional engineering of this most important institution.

But the Republic of Ireland has been a democratic leader in public participation in citizens’ assemblies tasked to consider constitutional amendments.

And there have been similar scholarly, rather than government-backed, experiments with smaller-scale deliberative forums in the North.

Deliberative Forums

In 2024, the Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South (Arins) team organised two deliberative forums – managed discussions among groups – in Athlone and Belfast to see how samples of the public would respond to possible models of government formation, also known as executive formation, in a united Ireland once they had a chance to learn about them and discuss them in detail.

The forums complemented the Arins/Irish Times surveys, which we used to identify the views of the public, North and South, on how best to govern a united Ireland in the event that Irish unification was supported in referendums.

We presented participants at the deliberative forums with five possible models, which they then considered in round-table discussions and in question-and-answer sessions.

We made clear that we were discussing the central government of a parliamentary system, one which would exist whether a united Ireland becomes a centralised unitary state or a unitary state with a devolved executive and assembly in the North.

We described the core features of each model as follows:

Southern Model

Irish model In this model, executive formation would proceed in the same way as it does at present in the Republic of Ireland. Any party winning an absolute majority in Dáil Éireann would form the government and nominate the prime minister/taoiseach, who in turn would nominate 15 cabinet ministers. But if no single party on the island had a majority of seats after an election, then any combination of parties that could command a majority could form the government. No special provisions would exist under unification for Northern parties from a British or unionist tradition. They would be treated just like any other party: they could become part of a coalition government, but no rules would require that they must be part of the Government.

Northern Model

A strikingly different way to organise the executive in a united Ireland would be to adopt an approach that resembles that used in Belfast since the Belfast Agreement, Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace agreement. The all-island government would be formed as a powersharing arrangement, with two joint prime ministers: one from the largest party that chose to join the “British” bloc in the all-island parliament and one from the largest party that chose to join the “Irish” bloc.

Either the British or the Irish bloc could veto the formation of the government and after a government was formed either of the two prime ministers might choose to resign, causing the collapse of the government and a fresh general election.

The prime minister from the British bloc would be able to veto proposed legislation which they claim harms a fundamental interest or right of the people who identify as British or unionist on the island.

The government could, however, override this veto if the Supreme Court found the claim invalid. (This rule would tweak the present arrangements in the North).

The government would include all political parties with significant support which wished to participate: all political parties passing a minimum threshold of 7 per cent of the seats would have the right to be part of the governing coalition.

We then presented three hybrid or compromise models modifying existing arrangements in the Republic and the North to see if any of these would be judged better for a united Ireland.

The inclusive coalition model

Under this model governments would be formed through “inclusive coalitions”. In one way, this approach would resemble what now happens in Northern Ireland. Parties that pass a minimum threshold of seats would have the automatic right to be part of the coalition government. They would get cabinet ministries in proportion to their size in seats won in parliament. Under unification this process would make it likely that the largest unionist party would have one or two cabinet seats. However, unlike the present Northern system, there would be just one prime minister – the leader of the largest party in the all-island parliament – and British unionists would have no veto over legislation or government formation (or maintenance).

The quota model

In another possible model, which would have stronger safeguards for unionists, any government formed under unification would reserve two cabinet ministries for British-unionist politicians elected in one of the northern six counties; these ministers would have the right to veto legislation deemed to undermine the interests of those who identify as British, again subject to Supreme Court review.

The territorial model

A last approach to organising government formation under unification would prioritise the meaningful representation of the present “North”, proportionally based on comparative population size, to minimise any risk that a united Ireland would be dominated by the current South in a united Ireland. On today’s figures, this would mean that at least four out of the 15 cabinet ministers must be elected from one or other of the six northern counties.