Responding to comments by the DUP and UUP in recent days expressing some concern about the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval TUV Castlereagh Councillor Andrew Girvin said:
“These proposals should come as no surprise to anyone as TUV has repeatedly highlighted the direction in which things were going.
“On 3rd January 2014 TUV issued a statement entitled 22 Fundamental Flaws in the Haass proposals in which we pointed out that “The alternative Independent Commission for Information Retrieval (ICIR) is a pitiful substitute for the justice that innocent victims crave. Untested, even anonymous, self-serving terrorist versions of the “truth” provide more opportunity for Provo rewrite of history than satisfaction for innocent victims”.
“Similarly, on 24th December 2014 we warned: “Sinn Fein, having got caught out in the Boston Tapes saga, has secured the major concession that any information obtained by the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval (ICIR) will not be admissible in either criminal or civil proceedings, nor provided to any law enforcement agency”.
“In March 2015 TUV leader Jim Allister exposed the fact that the legislation would be passed through Westminster, in spite of most of it relating to devolved issues, in an attempt to keep the hands of local politicians clean and give them some deniability.
“Last month we challenged the executive parties on their plan to hide the names of killers from the families of their victims.
“Other Unionists have belatedly started to complain about these matters but the reality is that both the DUP and UUP are heavily implicated in this process having gone through the Haass talks which were where these ideas had their genesis, then the Stormont House talks and now the latest round of discussions.
“Everything TUV has said about the ICIR has proven to be correct. If other Unionists are now, belatedly, shifting to our ground now that the spotlight has focused more brightly on the issue it is incumbent upon them to call time on this betrayal of justice and innocent victims and pull the plug on the talks.”