Official Report: Minutes of Evidence

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Welcome back. You are very welcome. We have Sir Declan Morgan, the chief commissioner; Mr Peter Sheridan, the commissioner for investigations; and Ms Josephine Kelly, the director of finance and corporate services. Before I invite you to make your opening remarks, I thank you, because I know that we do not have the right to invite you to our Committee and you are here voluntarily. I appreciate that you have taken time to prepare for today, and I really thank you for coming along. Sir Declan, would you like to make some opening remarks?

Sir Declan Morgan (Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery): I am tempted to say that it is always a pleasure to be here, but I am not entirely sure about that. [Laughter.]

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): I do not think that any of our witnesses say that.

Sir Declan Morgan: Legacy is controversial. It is the subject of political debate. There is no surprise in any of that. There is no single right answer to legacy, and there is no point in pretending that there is. The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 had things that were helpful to victims and families. It provided for investigation and information. It gave opportunities for prosecution, and it provided for reports for families. For people who had been shabbily treated by the closure of the Historical Enquiries Team in 2013, which was done unceremoniously, without any explanation or indication of support for what was to happen thereafter, the Act was a lifeline. However, it had issues that were problematic. Although it provided for prosecutions, it did not provide us with the powers necessary of a police force in order to carry out those prosecutions. The effect of the Act's shutting down inquests and civil actions was horrendous for the people who aspired to use the inquest process, which I had set up as a result of the Coroners Service being left under my charge at the end of 2015. For those people, I understand why the Act has been difficult to stomach. I do not pull any punches in relation to that. I had a decision to make to balance those things. When I set up the inquests, I did not stop because the people who did not have inquests were not going to get something out of the arrangement. This time, I did not think that I should stop the prospect of investigation because it happened that the inquests and civil actions for the time being were shut down. I felt that the obligation to families was overwhelming.

We started on 1 May 2024. We are and were a start-up. At that stage, we had seven people. We had a budget that was based on our having 40 cases in the course of the first year. We had 60 people who came to us in the course of the first month, and 159 who came to us by the end of the first year, but our budget profile has not changed. The present position is that we are operating at about half of the investigator complement that is appropriate for our needs. That has been recognised not just by us but by independent people whom we have brought in jointly with the Northern Ireland Office (NIO). The NIO, which is our sponsor Department, is supportive of the fact that that is an issue. When we did bring people in, we brought them from a wide range of areas: the Met, the PSNI, the ombudsmen, HMRC, the Civil Service, lawyers, finance, HR, communications, data protection and trauma risk management (TRiM), because, for us, the recognition that trauma was at the centre of what we were doing was vital. TRiM is, and has been, at the heart of everything that we have been doing.

Around the end of last year, other board members and I became aware of behaviours that we did not think were appropriate and that needed to be investigated. For that reason, we decided, as a board, to set up a review to look at culture, which was, as you know, carried out by Peter May. In discussion with the sponsor Department, we looked at questions of governance and finance, because we felt that those issues needed to be examined as well. The report that has been produced has made 19 recommendations on how we should proceed, and we accept all the recommendations. We are working closely with Peter May in order to implement those recommendations. You will see that some of them are a "once and done" effort. For instance, setting up a finance committee is just setting up a finance committee. However, some of them will require sustained, ongoing engagement. Peter and I are overseeing the way in which findings reports come through, and the relationship between findings and investigations as that happens is a continuing process. Around half the recommendations have been completed, and the other half are all on track. We have regular weekly and fortnightly meetings, which are essentially oversight meetings, in order to ensure that we keep at this. Those meetings will probably become less regular as we go through those recommendations and manage to deal with more of them. That will take time in some cases, particularly in those that involve culture, to ensure that we get what we want.

It is not altogether a surprise that, if you bring a range of people from totally different backgrounds together, you have the potential for problems. However, the bottom line is that there is no excuse for rude or disrespectful behaviour. It does not matter whether it relates to women — of itself, of course, that is a concern — men or anybody else who is connected with the organisation, including requesting individuals or other people who, for whatever reason, may have views about the commission. We are better than that. I am sure that our staff have appreciated the commitment that we have shown, in the past couple of months, in reaching out to them to make clear that we are committed to ensuring that we deal with the issues that were raised in Peter's report.

I can tell you a little about where we are with regard to reports if that would be helpful to you. You may want to leave that to the questions.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): We have been given the action plan and the updates report, so we have that.

Sir Declan Morgan: I was talking about where we are with cases that are coming through.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): That would be useful, yes. Sorry.

Sir Declan Morgan: I will give you the headlines, as it were. We have 123 ongoing investigations. That is more murders than the Met has in the course of a year. The cases vary in complexity. You have a case such as Guildford, where a huge amount of work has already been done. That all needs to be examined. However, the other thing to remember about that case is that it was part of a series of events over a certain period, so there are around eight to 10 linked cases that we need to look at. We estimate that cases with that degree of complexity will require at least five years of investigation before a report can be issued. That is our estimate. We have other cases where the complexity is quite low and the opportunities for investigation are quite small. We have indicated that the period for investigation in those types of cases should not exceed two years. In the middle, we have a group of cases that we set at a three-year period. We are trying to brand or brigade the cases so as to ensure that we create timelines within which things will happen.

We have four cases for which the investigative process has been completed. Those four cases have moved to findings. The first three of those were on 1 April of this year. Findings completed its work on the first of those cases on 2 June, and that case is now going through the representations process. Under the Act, we have to go through a series of processes. Any of you who are familiar with Maxwellisation in the public sector will be aware that that can create a degree of delay. We expect that two of the remaining cases will have gone through to the Maxwellisation process or the representations process by the end of August, and that the third or fourth cases will be at that stage by the end of September. Our target is to be in double figures in the number of reports by the end of this calendar year. We expect to move much more quickly in the following calendar years.

I think, if that helps —.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you very much. Thank you again for coming to the Committee today. I will go into some of the questions in the report and then maybe focus on some of the broader political issues. I will focus on the area of the report that deals with data breaches. There does not seem to be a recommendation against that section. I also have concerns around the statement:

Does that mean that there was a time when there was no data protection officer (DPO) in the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR)? Who was overseeing that, given that it is such a sensitive, core part?

Sir Declan Morgan: We had a firm of solicitors that acted as our data protection officers. Josephine can speak a little more about that. There were other things that we did. We changed our email system. The first change was to ensure that the sender got a reminder when an email was going outside the organisation: something came up to tell them that. We have now gone further than that and require branding on each email to indicate whether it is internal or external and whether or not it is sensitive. We have actually changed our processes twice to look at that.

Ms Josephine Kelly (Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery): As Sir Declan said, we have put in place a number of systems and processes for the purpose of strengthening following the data breach that you are talking about, which happened a number of months ago. However, I think that you question was about —

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): A senior responsible person.

Ms Kelly: — what happened at the end of the secondment. We are in the middle of a recruitment process, so I cannot say much about that, but the idea is to have somebody permanently in the organisation. It will be a permanent post in ICRIR, but we know that recruitment and vetting takes time, so a firm of solicitors is covering the DPO role on our behalf during the intervening period.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Given the sensitivity and scale of your work, is it sufficient that you are farming that out to an external organisation?

Ms Kelly: That is to give us external, independent support, but we have other processes. That falls within my remit, and there are other members of staff, but we would like to build on that by having a permanent member of staff. We are building on our security processes all the time. It is not a once and for all; it is an ongoing process.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you. The Committee has heard from other arm's-length bodies and outside bodies for which commissioners have had to come in, sort out the photocopier, work out the policies and recruit the staff. From this report, I take it that you were very similar: you had to start on the first day with a blank piece of paper and a pen and scale it up quickly from there. With hindsight, considering the fact that you are based across three locations, are there factors that, if you were to go back and start again — set this up again — you think are salvageable from the mistakes that were made at the start?

Sir Declan Morgan: Well, the word "salvageable" sort of hit —. I am not sure that where we are —.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Maybe "reversible" with regard to some of the decisions that were taken at the start.

Sir Declan Morgan: The truth is, Chair, that we had a long discussion on the board about whether we should start on 1 May, despite the fact that there was a start date then, because we took the view that our level of maturity was such that we were at risk of being completely overwhelmed and that the organisation would not recover from it. One of the options would have been to formally start but not accept any applications for, say, six months, or something like that. Maybe we should have talked to our sponsor Department about that to see whether it would have been up for it. Of course, given the events that happened, if we had, we would have been talking to one Government on 1 May and another one some time thereafter, and the other one would have been telling us that they agreed that the Act was unsuitable in various respects. There is never a right answer.

There is no doubt that starting as we did, in the state of very limited preparedness that we were in, has cost us. We could have avoided that by putting it off for six months, or something like it. It would need to have been for that length of time, because what happened when we actually got started was that everybody who came to us on the investigative side — not everybody, but most of those who came to us — had to be vetted. The election came at the start of July. Every bag carrier for every Minister thereafter had to be vetted, and the rest of us were thrown to the wolves. There was no space or resource to do it. We had to wait months for the new Government's members to go through the vetting process, and then we came back on to the track again. You cannot complain about those things; you have just got to take them as they come. However, it was another factor that undoubtedly contributed to the fact that we were really in a parlous state for the first six months, at least, of the organisation. It was about making do and trying to do what we could for victims.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Thank you.

You mentioned four cases that were completed to investigative stage etc. I mean this with no disrespect to anybody involved or any of the victims: it just seems that it is such an overwhelming process for each individual case and all that is associated with it. Do you think that it is actually achievable for the organisation, and possibly the legacy commission? Can you actually deliver on this?

Sir Declan Morgan: The truth is that, if we stay at a stage where the independent evidence is telling us that we need the resource that we need to do this, and that, if we have the resource, we will be able to do it, the question for us is what happens if we do not have the available resource. If we end up in a situation where we have half the resource that we need to do the job, we are in trouble. That is why the discussion that is ongoing at the moment between ourselves, our sponsor Department and the Treasury is absolutely vital for us. If that does not work out, I will be back — well, I cannot invite myself back, but you may agree to hear from me in relation to exactly what we would do in those circumstances. Maybe we would then have to think about the temporary closure of the organisation to accepting new receipts, which we decided not to do on 1 May. All options would be open at that stage.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Peter, do you want to come in?

Mr Peter Sheridan (Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery): Yes. Your question is a good one. I do not know of any other legacy body that has faced a portfolio of the breadth, depth and interconnection that we have had. As Sir Declan said at the start, almost 300 people have approached the commission so far. While a lot of those cases are individual cases, let me just give you a sense of some of the other cases and explain a bit about what that means. They include the Guildford pub bombings, the M62 coach bombing, the Enniskillen bomb, the Shankill Road fish shop bomb, La Mon, Teebane, Claudy, Kingsmills, Warrenpoint, Canary Wharf and the Baltic Exchange. That is almost all the major atrocities during the Troubles. I do not think that anybody who was setting up the Act envisaged that that would happen. Certainly, when we arrived, we were told that there would be 40 cases in the first year. There were 60 in the first month of it. Then, when you come to look at it, as Sir Declan said, the Metropolitan Police, on average, are on about 100 to 125 murders a year. The PSNI are probably around the 16 to 20 mark a year. When you look at those cases, you find that most of them are, typically, single incidents. He stabbed her; a domestic violence case; one victim, largely, rather than a number of victims. The evidence is there, at the scene, live; the witnesses are there; there is limited historic disclosure; there is limited likelihood of intelligence or state involvement; and progression of those cases, either to the Crown Prosecution Service or the Public Prosecution Service, can run pretty quickly. Having been in charge of murder investigation teams before, I know that you can run down the investigation team very quickly.

That is very different from legacy, where you have multiple fatalities. In all those cases that I listed, you have multiple fatalities across a whole range of linked incidents; evidence that is decades old, incomplete or contested; and extensive intelligence and state material. I have to go looking in all the state agencies. They have to give me the information. It takes time to do that, and then I have to triangulate the information as it comes in. There is extensive intelligence and state material. The PSNI alone has 44 million documents. That is one agency. There has been persistent, intensive investigation from the start of this. I have not been able to run down any cases at this stage, in any of them. Then, we have continuous legal, political and family scrutiny. We met two solicitors today about their families and their cases, and that is constant. Sometimes I do not think that there is an understanding of the scale of the work that we are being expected to do, and, as Sir Declan said, we are still running at less than 50% of the resources that we need to do the job.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Thank you. There are only five of us at this meeting today, so maybe we will get a little more time. Do not worry, there are not more people online ready to come in for questioning.

One more from me on the wider political issue around the Legacy Act and your engagement with the NIO, the passage of that, and the impact that the uncertainty, possibly, for want of a better word, around what the final Bill will look like as regards your ability as an organisation to move forward. Do you have any comment on that?

Sir Declan Morgan: Obviously, the sooner the uncertainty is addressed, the better. Legacy is always difficult. Like it or not, when you sign up for it, you understand what you are signing up for. None of us can say, "Oh dear, we did not expect this to happen". The assumption has to be that it will generally be worse or more difficult than you thought that it might have been. From our point of view, we want to see things coming through. There are things that we need to get. We need to get powers, for instance. We need to get engagement from Ireland to make this work. If we do not get those, we will not be able to do what we want to do for the victims and families. We want them to walk away from the process — I am not saying that we close the door on it, by any means, but that they know that we have investigated everything that needs to be investigated to find out the truth about their loved one. If we leave doors open, such as Ireland or some other area that has not been addressed, we will not have succeeded in doing that for those families.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Thank you. While it is in my head and before I bring in Deborah, we received a useful update in January this year from the Department of Foreign Affairs on the actions that it is taking forward. If there is anything that we can do by writing to the Irish Government on your behalf — I suppose that you have your own channels — and if there is anything that we can do to facilitate that dialogue around updates, we will be happy to do that.

Sir Declan Morgan: Thank you very much.

Mrs Erskine: Thank you for coming to the Committee today. We really appreciate the evidence that you have provided to us. To follow on from the data breach aspect, I noticed that there was one on 18 March relating to 25 individuals. Have there been any other, further data breaches, or was it just that one?

Ms Kelly: I started in the commission in January, so I can talk only about January onwards. There have been none in that period. I can come back to you with the facts if you want.

Mr Sheridan: My recollection is that there was another one. We reported it to the commissioner, but it probably was not required to be reported.

Mrs Erskine: It was reported?

Mr Sheridan: Yes, we reported it.

Mrs Erskine: Are you aware of the source of those data breaches?

Sir Declan Morgan: Yes.

Mrs Erskine: Is that being fully investigated by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)?

Sir Declan Morgan: That is why we have changed the email arrangements. The email arrangements previously did not contain warnings about emails going outside the organisation. We have put in further protection, so that people have to think twice about exactly where an email is going.

Mr Sheridan: There was no ICO investigation into any of them. They were at that threshold level, so there was not an investigation. We did our own investigation, obviously, to assess what happened and put fixes in place.

Mrs Erskine: I will move on to some of the elements in the report. Can we talk about the progress of investigations? You highlighted some of the numbers. Although £60 million has been spent to date, no cases have been completed. That is a large figure. Paragraph 3.6 of the report states:

It continues:

How can you give comfort to innocent victims, such as the Enniskillen families, whom I represent? Time and again, fresh information comes out in the media about their case, but they are in the middle of the process with you, and there has been no progress on truth and justice surrounding the murder of their loved ones at the hands of the IRA. How do you ensure that there is comfort for those innocent victims when they see such things?

Sir Declan Morgan: Paragraph 3.6 looks specifically at a point in the commission's processes where a case moves from investigation to findings. Peter, of course, deals with the investigative element. Under the Act, it is his responsibility to do that. Recommendation 5 directly addresses that. Peter and I oversaw the four cases that have already gone through. It has become apparent that producing those cases has an impact on the morale of the commission. We have seen very positive collaboration between people who are involved in different parts of the commission in working those cases through.

One has to be careful about each investigation. So long as the case is being dealt with as a liability case — in other words, that there is a possibility of prosecution — the degree to which information can be made available is similar — it might even be more — to the level of information that you would expect to give in a police investigation. It is not as broad as it would be if there were no police investigation, in which case you could feel more comfortable about disclosing lines of enquiry and things of that kind. If you are in a police investigation, you will sometimes want to ensure that those lines are protected, lest they undermine or in any way damage the prospect of criminal prosecution.

Mr Sheridan: I can reassure you that Sir Declan and I met the families from Enniskillen who came to us. However, not every family came to us, and we have a duty to let every family understand what is happening. You will know that a host of investigations have been carried out on that case. The legislation does not allow me to duplicate investigations unless I deem it appropriate, but it also says that I have to look into all the circumstances of a case, and there is a lot of material. Enniskillen is the same as the other big cases, in that there are links and connected cases, and it is not just about Enniskillen. Sir Declan and I met the families specifically about that, and we have a case support worker who will constantly go back to them if it is in the realm of a potential criminal investigation. We start every investigation as a criminal investigation. If it moves away from that, there is room to say more to the families as you go through the investigation. However, because it is still in the criminal investigation world, what we can say is limited, as with any police investigation.

Mrs Erskine: Can I ask you about the media reports? I am sure that you are aware of them.

Mr Sheridan: We are aware of that.

Mrs Erskine: This time last year, there were media reports about the Enniskillen bomb. Will those leads and media reports be investigated?

Mr Sheridan: Any information like that will form part of the investigation. We will bottom it out to see the truth. I know what you are talking about. Of course, we will not ignore something like that, and it will form part of the investigation.

Mrs Erskine: OK. How big a block are the Irish Government and agencies such as the gardaí in your investigations to move those cases on? Can you give any figures or statistics about the cases that are ongoing at the moment? The Irish Government are not providing information, and that is heaping trauma upon the innocent victims, particularly the Enniskillen bomb victims, where terrorists were, in my view, harboured by the Irish Government.

Sir Declan Morgan: It is not just about looking at the cases where the absence of information from Ireland is a problem. We know from talking to the support and advocacy groups that there are cases that have not come to us because they are aware that Ireland has not yet committed to providing the information. The present position is that Ireland is not providing us with information that relates to the investigations. Ireland is complying with the mutual legal aid process. In other words, the international letters of request, and only for cases where there is an active criminal investigation. The process is quite time-consuming, and an individual case can take 18 months or more before the information is provided, and even then, you might have to follow up.

To make it work, we want what we have with other agencies. We have a disclosure protocol for each case with the other agencies, and an example of that is on our website. We execute a disclosure protocol with agencies such as the PSNI, the security service and others to ensure that we get the information. We want the arrangements with the Irish Government to lead to the same approach to disclosure so that we can get the information.

What does that mean for sensitive information? The arrangement with the United Kingdom is that we are entitled to see all the sensitive information. The Government are then entitled to say that they do not want to disclose some information if there is a good national security reason. We can enter into discussions with the Government at that stage, and that is what the structure tells us. If there is a disagreement about that, whether it is the family and the Government, or the family and the ICRIR, there is a process for the courts to make a determination on whether the information was wrongly withheld.

If you were to look at that in a corresponding way, you would look for an arrangement whereby the sensitive information from Ireland would be disclosed by some mechanism within the commission. We would then have an opportunity to discuss that information and its retention, where the Irish Government sought to retain it, and there would be a corresponding judicial process in the Republic of Ireland to make determinations as to whether the retention of the information on national security grounds was appropriate. The objective should be to mirror, in each jurisdiction, the ways in which that is done.

Mrs Erskine: Obviously, you have brought forward to the NIO what you want to happen.

Sir Declan Morgan: I have made the point to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee. I am on record as having said so.

Mrs Erskine: What are the figures when it comes to requests that you have made to the Irish Government about cases? What is the rate of response?

Mr Sheridan: The requests are in the double figures, Deborah. Victims' families will know that I have requested information. I have had no response to any of them yet. Sir Declan and I met Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly in January, and there is no reluctance from the guards. It is a political issue. The politics of it has to be resolved to allow the guards to release the information. There has been no response to date to any of my letters. At some stage, once I have exhausted an inquiry, if that information is outstanding, I will either have to pause the investigation or accept that I will not get it and write up the findings in the report to Sir Declan, but it will be missing that piece of information.

Mrs Erskine: That is crucial.

Mr Sheridan: It could be, in any case. Without knowing what you do not know —. That is why we ask, "What information do you hold on this, this and this?" We have had no response as yet.

Mrs Erskine: You said that there were double figures.

Mr Sheridan: Yes, for letters of request for information.

Mrs Erskine: Do you have a specific figure?

Mr Sheridan: I can come back to you with an exact figure, Deborah, if you want. My last recollection is that it is in the region of 11 or 12 letters.

Mrs Erskine: The fact that you have received no response from the Irish Government about such critical information relating to the trauma that innocent victims have had to go through speaks volumes. It says that the Irish Government are withholding information that could provide truth and justice to innocent victims in Northern Ireland. That speaks volumes.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Before I bring in Áine, is that because they are waiting to pass their own legislation, or could they do it now?

Sir Declan Morgan: They could do it now by legislation, if they wanted to, but they have indicated that their legislation will not be put before the Dáil before the legacy Bill has been passed.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. I just wanted clarification.

Sir Declan Morgan: That is why the legacy Bill is critical in a number of respects for our continuing and succeeding in our work.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): We may follow up on that as well.

Ms Murphy: Thanks for coming in today, folks. I will pick up on some of the remarks that the former Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan made on the back of the report. She asked:

She also declared:

We had Andrew Walker from the Victims and Survivors Service here a number of weeks ago. In contrast to the ICRIR, the service has budgetary constraints and faces a £3 million shortfall. To pick up on those remarks, how can £60 million be spent and produce not one report published to date?

Sir Declan Morgan: I will ask Josephine to deal with some of that. Some of it is capital costs — in other words, setting the organisation up — and some of it is day-to-day costs.

Ms Kelly: There is a figure out there of approximately £60 million. We should look at that as an investment. We talked earlier about starting with five people. You can see the number of staff that we have. We have to house people; we work in Belfast and London; we need to have complex systems. We need accommodation that is appropriate for our remit. There is investment to carry out the delivery of the organisation, and that should not be lost. I do not like to go for exact figures, but look at, maybe, £15 million to £20 million to set the thing up, and then the investment that is required to move forward with the like of staff costs and the year-on-year running costs. It is being looked at with an attitude of, "Sixty million pounds spent and no reports", but it was about setting up an organisation that would be ready for the next 10 years and the delivery of reports to come.

Mr Sheridan: Áine, you say, "not one report", but there are 123 ongoing investigations into of some of the most serious cases in the Troubles. These things take time. When the ombudsman started, there may have been reports in the first couple of years, but they were disciplinary and misconduct cases. That is not what I am investigating. I am investigating deaths of people and connected deaths of people. That takes time, unfortunately. It is as if the £60 million is about having five reports, for instance, and that that is worth £60 million. As Josephine said, a range of things is required for setting up. We are not a mature organisation. We are a start-up organisation. That requires us to buy desks, other furniture and buildings — all the infrastructure that you have to put in place to start this off, if you are going to invest in victims and survivors. I do not think that we can cheapen it and say, "If you'd had a report out, it would've been worth the £60 million". There are a lot of start-up costs. We were almost expected to be a mature organisation at the beginning and, of course, that was not the case. To move from seven staff to 270 in under two years, and do all the necessary recruitment and vetting and get the buildings and infrastructure in place, takes money, unfortunately.

Ms Murphy: What are your projected costs over the next 12 months?

Sir Declan Morgan: It depends on what you mean by "projected costs over the next 12 months". Our budget tells us what we can spend. We have already indicated that the independent review has told us that that budget is not going to enable us to deliver what we want to deliver.

Ms Kelly: There is an outline business case with the NIO and Treasury. That is where our efforts are being put.

Ms Murphy: There are 270 staff at the minute. How many of those staff are investigators?

Mr Sheridan: One hundred and twenty six.

Ms Murphy: So, just under 50%.

Mr Sheridan: Those are investigators, but you also have analysts and major incident room staff, who are the receivers and recorders. About 70% or 75% of the organisation is on my side of the house. If you ask the simple question, "How many investigators are there?", the answer is 126, but if you ask how many are in my directorate, the number is closer to 200.

Ms Murphy: Obviously, Peter May's report includes such descriptions as "toxic". Declan, you touched on some of the language in your opening remarks. Other issues were raised, such as:

In addition, some indicated that they believed that the behaviour to which they had been subjected was "gendered in nature" — I am quoting from the report — and one said:

Had any of those concerns been raised at your board, previously? Or, had any board members been aware of some of those concerns?

Sir Declan Morgan: The concerns were discussed at the board in December and were part and parcel of the decision that we needed to have a serious look at this. Before we came here, I checked; we have a process for raising a grievance and a process for raising a concern. The process for raising a concern involves a disclosure to an independent whistle-blowing champion. That process is designed to guarantee the anonymity of the person who is raising the concern, if that is what they want. I asked whether, through any of those processes, there has been any indication from any member of staff that there is a gender issue, and I was told that there have been no complaints of any kind through those processes, although, obviously, such things have been raised with Peter May. That requires us to look much more closely at the issue.

The culture approach that we are taking is designed to bottom out whether there is evidence of gender issues in the commission. The commission's chief executive, director of finance and corporate affairs, director of human resources and head of findings are all women. Ten of the 14 people in the leadership team are women. We have a strong representation of women. I think that 54% of our staff are women and 46% are men. We have a lot of diversity in our composition. We need to make sure that there is nothing below the surface that we need to flush out.

Mr Sheridan: The senior leadership team sets the tone in any organisation. If the tone falls short — according to Peter May's report, it did — that is our responsibility. None of us here intends to distribute that responsibility anywhere else; we have to fix it.

There is no mitigation for some of the things that happened, but I want to try to help the Committee to understand how those things happened. The operational side of the commission, which is my side of the house, is demand-led and urgent. Victims and survivors of events from 30, 40 or 50 years ago are not abstractions; they are real people. Many of them are elderly. Many have been promised answers by the state before and have been failed. When that starts to happen, there is a moral rate that drives pace in the organisation. I keep saying that the culture in an organisation can cause friction, tension or stress. Investigators in the organisation who have absorbed the weight of victims' experiences may speak with an intensity that others feel is aggressive.

I know that the people from the corporate side of the organisation are equally committed when it comes to victims and survivors; there is no difference in that regard. What is different is that they are constraint-led: they have a budget, they have human resources and they have to follow procedures, such as vetting. That leads to clashes. Some people say, "We need people now. We need investigations". There is pressure from families and survivors who have been waiting for so long and want answers. Processes are in place in the organisation, but real gaps are created. Our finance and governance framework was being built while the organisation was running.

As I said, that is not mitigation; I am trying to give you an understanding of why some of those things happened.

Ms Murphy: Has the board finalised its policy on raising a concern, which is what recommendation 13 is about?

Sir Declan Morgan: Yes.

Ms Murphy: I have one final question, which is broad in nature. We briefly discussed the report during a meeting many weeks ago, which was when we decided to ask you to come back in. My main concern was about victims and survivors seeing the report and some of its findings. Victims and survivors may have lost confidence in you, off the back of the report. What steps can you take to address that?

Sir Declan Morgan: One of the things that has been apparent from our engagement with victims and survivors, which we have done extensively since the report came out, is that their concern is about what is happening with their case and whether progress will be slowed down in any way, or stopped.

In many, many cases, it is reassurance about the way in which we are progressing with the case that has been important.

Given the theme of your questioning, there is one more thing that I would like to say. Along with my fellow senior commissioners, I took the opportunity to apologise to those people who had been through the experience of having been disrespected in the commission. I take the opportunity to publicly acknowledge what they went through and apologise to them for that. I recognise and commend the people who felt able to come forward and demonstrate that there were problems that needed to be resolved.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): OK. Thank you.

Mr Brett: Colleagues, thank you very much for coming along. It is a genuine pleasure to have you here, Sir Declan, Peter and Josephine. You have dedicated your lives to public service here in Northern Ireland, and you could have happily retired. Instead, you dedicated yourselves again to public service, because at the core of all the work that you do is the attempt to provide truth and justice to victims of terrorism, regardless of their background or political persuasion, over many years in Northern Ireland. Sir Declan, that is what you dedicated your life to as Lord Chief Justice. Peter, that is what you dedicated your life to, serving in the former Royal Ulster Constabulary and in the PSNI, and then being the very man who went on to deliver what is probably one of the most iconic photographs in the history of Northern Ireland: the handshake between the late Her Majesty The Queen and the late deputy First Minister. I record my thanks to each and every one of you for your public service.

Sir Declan Morgan: Thank you.

Mr Brett: I will pick up, first, on the point that you commented on on the obstruction by the Irish Government. In Northern Ireland, we are used to being lectured by the Irish Government on legacy. However, this is the first time that I have heard that you have sent over 10 requests to the Irish Government for information. I am trying to get to the bottom of it: how many murders does that involve? Is it 11 separate murders or is it cases in which multiple people were murdered?

Mr Sheridan: It is 10 separate cases that we are looking for information from them on. There were some 540 deaths along the border, so you can see the size of it. As Sir Declan said, we know that people have not come to us because they are saying, "What is the point? You cannot get information about it". Until the politics of that is fixed, Phillip —. My job is to get information; to seek to get, as Sir Declan says, "the unvarnished truth". We can do that only when we get information from everybody, no matter where the agency is. People constantly talk about the importance of victims and survivors and then, somehow, do the opposite.

Mr Brett: Do you have a view as to what the Irish Government have to hide in relation to your requests that have gone unanswered?

Mr Sheridan: I do not know. That is kind of a political question, Phillip. I just want the information. I do not know whether they are hiding it. I think that it is stuck in the politics of this place.

Mr Brett: We need to be able to look beyond the politics of the Irish Government's view of the UK or the UK's view of the Irish Government. At the end of the day, it is about people. It is about victims. It is about people who were Catholic, Protestant or of no religion at all; innocent people who were murdered. At the end of the day, all we are looking for is to seek truth and justice from that, so I find it, frankly, remarkable that a Government in the Republic of Ireland who are attempting to bring the UK Government to court for their views on legacy are denying your request.

I will now pick up on another issue in relation to an article and interview done by the chief commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, who, in my view, is a failed political campaigner and someone who has wasted public money here in Northern Ireland in trying to pursue her political ideology. She made some serious accusations about members of the ICRIR, claiming that both you, Sir Declan, and you, Peter, were in "untenable" positions. In her interview, she maintained that you, Peter, as lead investigator, could not be independent and that your position was "untenable". In your case, Sir Declan, she questioned a conflict of interest in relation to your role as a panel member in the Supreme Court. Obviously, the courts have made a ruling that Ms Kilpatrick was wrong and that her attacks on you were not true. Would you like to take the opportunity to set out your response to some of the claims that were made?

First, Peter, she believes that the majority of relatives view your role as untenable. Let me be very clear: as somebody who is a victim of terrorism, I do not believe that your role is untenable. Given the role that you have played in Northern Ireland over many years, you are the perfect person for the role, and you should not resign. You are doing an excellent job. Ms Kilpatrick does not speak for victims whom I know. Do you wish to comment on that?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): You can answer that as you see fit.

Mr Sheridan: I have tried not to get involved in that spat. The courts made a decision. In fact, the Supreme Court said that there was an unarguable case for my independence. I fully acknowledge that, given my policing background, there will be people who will have concerns about my role. However, given the way that it is structured, if somebody came to the commission and said, "I do not want to go to the commission because Peter Sheridan is there", we have methodologies to allow people to come in. I have said, quite happily, that, if that was stopping a victim coming, I would step aside and recuse myself from that investigation. My deputy investigator, Keith Surtees, who came from Operation Kenova, would take over the investigation, and I would not be part of it.

There are conflicts of interest already in place. The 300 people who have come to the commission come from every walk of life. They come from veterans' families, police families and prison officers' families, as well as from the broader nationalist and unionist communities, but they also come from IRA families and loyalist paramilitary families. I recently dealt with the family of an IRA man who was shot dead by the army, and I finalised the case concerning that individual.

I accept, Phillip, that there will always be —. It is the nature of Northern Ireland. I do not know whom you would get to do this job who would be accepted by everybody. That is to do with the politics of this place. All that I can say is that I do my level best, and always have done, for whoever comes into the organisation. If somebody is desperately sure that they will not come in if I was there, I would recuse myself and the case can be picked up by somebody else.

Mr Brett: For the record, it is important to note that, when you were in the RUC and the PSNI, Peter, you were the most senior Catholic officer and that there were attempts on your life by unionists and nationalists because of the important work that you did. It is important to record that.

Sir Declan, you will be aware of the chief commissioner's comments about you. In her interview, she stated:

Obviously, the commissioner does not understand the operation of the Supreme Court, but that is another matter. Do you wish to comment on that?

Sir Declan Morgan: As you would imagine, the Supreme Court operates conflict of interest arrangements. I have talked to the president of the Supreme Court about that, and those systems have worked satisfactorily.

Mr Brett: I was concerned about some of the comments that she made. In that same interview, she stated:

I noticed that the ICRIR's response clearly noted that the chief commissioner had not taken up your kind offer to have a meeting with her to discuss the issues that she had. Now that she has been defeated in the courts, having wasted public money on her attempts to undermine the credibility of you both, has she met you?

Sir Declan Morgan: No. We have not had a meeting. I have not renewed the offer, but I am happy to talk to anybody about any aspect of this matter and to hear what they have to say.

Mr Brett: Finally, for the record, can you confirm the final conclusions of the Supreme Court ruling on the matter?

Sir Declan Morgan: In the end, the case of Dillon et al was about whether the legislation indicated that, in all cases or virtually every case, the ICRIR would not be compliant with the convention, and the Supreme Court held that it was not made out. Effectively, it means that, in each and every case, it is up to us to demonstrate that we can be convention compliant, and that is what we intend to do.

Mr Brett: Thank you very much.

Mr Gaston: It is good to have you back at the Committee. Since the inception of the ICRIR, it has come under significant pressure, particularly from nationalism. It is almost as though they want you to fail; they want you to disband. Given your comments today, do you feel that the NIO set you up to fail in that it gave you the resources to deal with only 40 cases from the get-go, when you had 60 cases in the first month and 159 in the first year?

Sir Declan Morgan: I have had regular meetings with the Secretary of State and with the permanent secretary. I also engage with other members of the NIO staff on a range of matters. I have never experienced a suggestion that the NIO was opposed to our successful completion of our objective. The NIO has positively supported the ICRIR's requests for information. The outcome of that request is important in our being able to deliver the project. It would, obviously, be very disappointing if we failed to get the necessary funding, despite the support of the Secretary of State and the NIO.

Mr Gaston: You mentioned that the NIO has supported your requests for information. However, the budget profile has not changed.

Sir Declan Morgan: No, the budget has not changed. As Josephine will tell you, understanding the ins and outs of how to work with annually managed expenditure (AME) was a problem for the renewable heat incentive, and it has been something of a problem for us, too. Ours is capped AME, which is a very particular animal. It is not like pensions, and the opportunities for re-profiling seem to be very limited. I am not sure that everybody really understood the AME that was being provided at the time. They should have understood it, but I am not entirely convinced that everybody actually understands it. There is a degree of people learning now or finding out now what AME is and what it can do.

Mr Gaston: I will take you through some of the figures. Some 300 people have come to the commission to date. Your update to the Committee today is that 123 investigations are ongoing and four cases have moved to the findings. Is that a totality of 127 cases?

Sir Declan Morgan: No, that is not quite the figure. There are 76 people in the wings who are waiting to come through, and 25 of those people have serious harm cases. We need to look very closely at those cases, because the Act is very strict about the cases that can pass. However, in the round, it is fair to say that we have 170 to 175 investigations in our workload at the moment.

Mr Sheridan: I will give you some clarity on that. I hear the comment made out there that the figure of up to 300 is just enquiries. They are not enquiries. They are people who have come to the commission and asked for their case to be examined. They are not enquiries. A range of other people ring in and enquire, but these are people who have come to the commission.

Mr Gaston: Is that 300 individuals?

Mr Sheridan: Yes. It is just shy of 300 individuals at the moment.

When individuals come to the commission, they go into what is called "case support". That is about helping those people to understand the type of investigations that we do, which can be culpability- or liability-focused, so that they are satisfied that they want that to happen. They sit with the case support team for a period, and they then go through what we call a "case management panel", where their eligibility is agreed. Once that happens, they move from there and are allocated to an investigation team for a specific syndicate to investigate their case. The investigation then happens, and they are transferred to the findings team. There is a sequence to it.

Unlike when somebody goes to the police and makes an allegation and the investigation starts right away, with us, because it is to do with legacy, people need to understand what an investigation means for them and what the outcomes might look like. We take time with them, as part of our trauma-informed approach, so that they understand. Once they hear about it, very few people decide that it is not for them. There are some, but it is a small number. They go through to the case management panel for eligibility, and the case is then taken on.

Mr Gaston: Can you give us a breakdown or flavour of how many families of serving police officers or military personnel who were murdered have come forward to you? The Veterans Commissioner is at Committee later, so it would be good for us to have an idea of that.

Mr Sheridan: I do not keep a record, because we investigate deaths. I do not look at whether someone was Protestant or Catholic or whether they were from the IRA or the UDA. I will answer as somebody who has experience and can look at the cases, by and large. A third of the cases that came at the start were from veterans' families. That changed in, probably, October, after the Secretary of State and the Tánaiste made the legacy framework agreement. You will have seen the debate about veterans taking hold in England. The number of veterans who have come to the commission since then has nosedived to less than a handful.

The next numbers related to police and prison officers. Then, we almost have an even split, Timothy, of people from the wider nationalist community and the wider unionist community. If you had tried to write it up in advance, you could not have done better. There are a small number of families whose loved ones were in the IRA, and a small number of people who came from a loyalist paramilitary background. We have those cases at the moment as well.

Some cases have come to us where the deaths did not happen in Northern Ireland. That brings its own complexity, and that includes cases in the Republic of Ireland.

Mr Gaston: I want to take a sidestep and take you to the proposed Bill as it relates to the commission. Clause 72(5) requires the commission to act compatibly with the national security interests of not only the United Kingdom but Ireland. For me, constitutionally, that is outrageous. What we have heard today about the Irish Republic's failure to engage and release information makes it even more absurd. Foreign states have competing national security interests. That binds us to taking on board the interests of a foreign state that does not take our interests on board or release information for innocent victims of terrorism who have been left in limbo.

You said that there were 540 deaths along the border. How many of the cases that you are currently investigating have a cross-border dimension? Are those 10 or 11 the totality of them, or are there a lot more than that?

Mr Sheridan: There are a lot more than that, Timothy. I do not have the figure off the top of my head, but a lot of cases have a cross-border link.

Mr Gaston: Those 10 or 11 cases are the cases that you have progressed to a stage to ask the guards, but —.

Mr Sheridan: It might just be that there is no information that I require. I might be able to get the information here, because it has been shared previously with Northern Ireland. There is a whole host of reasons why, but you will not be surprised that the cases are not limited to Northern Ireland.

Mr Gaston: Have you made the request for the disclosure protocol?

Sir Declan Morgan: The meeting that we had in January with the Garda Commissioner was with a view to exploring the arrangements for disclosure. The message that came back was that, for the time being, the politics of the matter means that the guards will not engage in the process of disclosure outside the international letters of request.

Mr Gaston: Was that a decision taken by the Irish Government?

Sir Declan Morgan: The Garda Commissioner told us that he had spoken to the Minister for Justice and that that was the position that he was taking on the basis of that discussion.

Mr Gaston: Going back to my question, clause 72(5) requires the commission to act compatibly with the national security interests not only of the United Kingdom but of Ireland.

Sir Declan Morgan: Yes.

Mr Gaston: You have had meetings with the Garda Commissioner, who has told you that, because of the politics, the guards will not release information.

Sir Declan Morgan: Yes. In other words, he said that, until the legacy Bill passes in the United Kingdom, the Irish Government's legislation will not be introduced. Going back to what I said earlier about clause 72(5), the question is this: what does the clause mean? If it means that, in Ireland, where there is a national security issue in relation to the information, the Government will disclose it to the commission, and it will then be subject to a ruling in the Irish courts as to whether national security interest is protected, that mirrors what we do in the United Kingdom. Alternatively, does it mean that the Irish Government will set up their own legacy investigations and look for information from Northern Ireland or from the United Kingdom that will be subject to the courts of the United Kingdom, which will determine whether the national security interest is properly protected, and that, in each case, the information will be available to the relevant commission so that a proper discussion can be had about whether it should be disclosed or a gist provided? If that is what it means, there is a lot of sense in it, but that presupposes a range of things that, as far as I can see, are not yet in place.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Last question, please, Timothy.

Mr Gaston: Following on from Phillip's question about the chief commissioner's calling you, Sir Declan, and Mr Sheridan into question, the court case that was referred to was taken by the victim of the IRA Shankill bombing Mr Gary Murray. The intervention was wholly inappropriate. Why did the ICRIR's litigation team not join that case fully? Why was it left to the victim to take it?

Sir Declan Morgan: We have to make a judgement about the fact that we have been criticised by a wide range of people in various ways. That criticism was unusual, because it came from a commission, but we had to make a decision about whether it was our job to raise issues about the way in which that commission worked or whether it was really for those who sponsored that commission to make a judgement about how it should work. Therefore, we stepped aside and did not feel that it was necessarily in the public interest for us to be proactive in that.

Mr Gaston: My final question relates to the conduct of Operation Denton. It went to Dublin and, without making any safeguards or taking appropriate steps, decided to disclose sensitive information to campaign groups. There are 123 ongoing investigations, and four cases have gone to findings: can you assure us that, prior to any disclosure that the ICRIR will make in the future, a proper process will be put in place rather than, as we saw with Operation Denton, information being given to far left and left-wing groups for political purposes?

Sir Declan Morgan: Our disclosure arrangements are that we talk to the families and make disclosures to them. We prepare reports, and they are subject to the usual Maxwellisation processes, meaning that they will require some disclosure and publication to the general public in the end. Those are the only people who will get the substance of what we have found.

Mr Gaston: Thank you.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): That is the end of our session. We really appreciate your time, as always. Good luck with your work going forward, and, if there is anything that the Committee can do to support that, please get in touch.

Sir Declan Morgan: We might take you up on that.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Will we read any actions into the record and get agreement on them?

The Committee Clerk: Officials will come back to us on the exact number of letters sent to the Irish Government asking for further information that have not been responded to. We will follow up on the progress of the legacy Bill, because it was stated that it cannot proceed until the UK legislation is through. That is all that I have, Chair.

Mr Brett: Chair, may I raise a couple of points?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Yes, go ahead, please, Phillip.

Mr Brett: Thank you. It is unbelievable that 11 separate requests have been made by the ICRIR to the Irish Government and have not been responded to. That could cover 10, 20, 30 or 40 murders. The very flowery letter that was sent by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to this Committee in January made a commitment that they would do all that they can to ensure truth and justice for all victims here in Northern Ireland, and it is clear that they have done the very opposite. I propose that, as a Committee, we write back expressing our deep concern and alarm at the action that they have taken to date and asking them to fully cooperate with the ICRIR and the search for truth and justice.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): Should we go further and invite representatives to the Committee? Obviously, we cannot compel, but we could invite them. Are we content with that suggestion?

Mr Brett: I have one other point. Is the Human Rights Commission coming before the Committee at any point?

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): No.

Mr Brett: In light of the commission's view on the ICRIR, I would be keen for its representatives to come to the Committee so that they can articulate their position. Obviously, the chief commissioner has a position, but I am not sure that that is reflective of the commission's position, so I am keen to invite the commission.

The Chairperson (Ms Bradshaw): The Human Rights Commission has come before us previously in relation to article 2 compliance under the Brexit deal. We will look again at that. We can certainly piggyback it on to that.