The head of Northern Ireland’s prosecution service has questioned if politicians have the will to tackle the fallout from the decades of violence.
There is a long-running debate on how to deal with the legacy of the Troubles, with some victims calling for prosecutions in unsolved murders, and others demanding information on how and why their loved ones were killed.
Barra McGrory was a high profile defence lawyer before recently being appointed director of public prosecutions.
In a speech to leading human rights watchdog the Belfast-based Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ), he said the question of dealing with Northern Ireland’s past should be a priority.
“I think there is an imperative in the public interest that society finds a mechanism to deal with the past,” he said.
“Whether that be simply giving more resources to the investigators to get on with the investigating, and then consequentially the prosecution service to prosecute cases if the evidence emerges, or whether or not society is ready for a solution to the past outside of the prosecutorial system, is a matter that I think this society needs to confront.
“In my view, the sooner it confronts it the better, but confront it it needs to.
“I think at the moment there perhaps isn’t a will to confront it in political circles because of the enormity of the decisions that have to be taken in that event. But that is not for me, that is for politicians and for society.”
Mr McGrory has said his decision to become a lawyer was heavily influenced by his late father Paddy McGrory, who acted in a series of high profile cases across the political divide, but who rose to international prominence as legal representative for the families of three unarmed IRA members shot dead by security forces in Gibraltar in 1988.
His father was identified as a potential target of the loyalist paramilitaries who killed solicitor Pat Finucane in Belfast in 1989. The British government recently apologised for the security force role in the killing and the Finucane family continues to call for a full public inquiry.
In the past Barra McGrory highlighted the failure in some quarters to separate lawyers from the alleged crimes of their clients.
He represented the husband of solicitor Rosemary Nelson after she was killed in a loyalist car bomb in 1999. A subsequent public inquiry into the murder was highly critical of the security forces.
Mr McGrory also represented the family of sectarian murder victim Robert Hamill, where allegations of security force wrongdoing in the Catholic man’s case are also the subject of a public inquiry.
He said that during his time as a defence lawyer, he rarely had reason to consider how the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) decided whether or not to proceed with prosecutions.
But Mr McGrory said his role in public inquiries had stirred a greater interest in the issue.
“I first came to examine the concept more closely in the context of my own involvement in a number of public inquiries, not least the inquiry into the death of Robert Hamill,” he said.
He added: “I think, perhaps even it would be safe to say that my representation of the Hamill family was one of the reasons why I perhaps took an interest in this job, in that, for the first time as a lawyer I had to confront the difficulties faced by victims of a crime and how they related to the prosecution and how the prosecution related to them. And that brought home to me the importance of the role.”
But he said, however, that more had to be done to ensure the role of prosecutors was better understood.
Mr McGrory quoted expert opinion, which said prosecutors were not advocates for victims in the way that defence lawyers are for defendants, but had a duty to ensure there was a fair and rigorous pursuit of justice.
He said he had represented families who were frustrated at the consideration given to the rights of alleged offenders and said it was important for prosecutors to communicate fully with the victims throughout the prosecutions process.
He said a pilot scheme was being launched to extend the circumstances in which victims received an explanation as to why prosecutions were not pursued.
Mr McGrory said circumstances, including issues around the potential reliability of witnesses or the safety of individuals linked to a case, often made it difficult for his office to publicly explain a decision not to pursue a case.
But he said the highest standards are applied to cases handled by the PPS.
He told the meeting of the CAJ, which is marking its 30th anniversary, that he valued its role in supporting lawyers and defending the impartial delivery of justice for all.
“As far as I am concerned there is a perfect consistency with what I have done up to now, and what I am now doing,” he said.
He quoted his late father as questioning whether the term “human rights lawyer” should be attached to legal professionals, arguing that all lawyers worked to ensure human rights were delivered to their clients.
Mr McGrory added: “Prosecutors are also human rights lawyers.”
PA