This evening at 9.30 p.m. on RTÉ, a programme will be aired that shows incontrovertible evidence that the British state colluded with the killings of hundreds of Irish citizens. It shows in particular the Glenanne gang, some of whom were also members of the security forces. I have spoken to people on the Relatives for Justice committee and they said that the citizens of the North feel abandoned. All the families are asking for is truth and justice with dignity. They are suggesting that the Irish Government needs to do more than just issue statements. They are asking for a visible presence of this State in the North to do much more on legacy issues. They are saying the issue cannot be seen through the prism of party politics. It has to be a human rights issue.

Successive Irish Governments have been very committed to legacy issues in successive agreements that arose out of the Good Friday Agreement. There have been ongoing issues in terms of getting agreement and clarity on those legacy agreements and getting them progressed. Unfortunately those issues continue, notwithstanding the new arrangements and new commitments that were made on all fronts to progress legacy and also in terms of investigation capacity and so on. This pertains to the activities of the Glenanne gang and so on, which are absolutely reprehensible, but also right across the board. In the earlier phases, the historical inquiries team, according to victims I met, at least did some reasonable work in terms of identifying people involved and so on and gave some answers. I think the situation around legacy generally has been one of those issues on which there has been a regrettable lack of progress across the board.