Have Your Say 2 – survey now closed

The Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery will provide information to families, victims and survivors of Troubles-related deaths and serious injury and promote reconciliation. 

The Commission’s work will: 
– Review deaths and other serious Troubles-related incidents, including deciding whether a criminal investigation should be part of the review;
– As part of reviews, give the opportunity for individuals to make personal statements on how the incidents have affected them;
– Require that any information necessary for our work is provided by PSNI, the security services, the Northern Ireland Office or any other public body and that any person comes to the Commission;
– Use police powers, where appropriate, including to secure evidence, arrest and question suspects;
– Produce and publish reports setting out the findings of our reviews;
– Decide whether to grant immunity from prosecution for serious Troubles-related offences (other than sexual offences) where they provide information through accounts that are true to the best of a person’s knowledge and belief;
– Refer deaths and other serious Troubles-related incidents to prosecutors where appropriate;
– Meet high standards of probity, act with integrity and conform to legal obligations, including the Human Rights Act 1998 and equality legislation;
– Ensure that it does not do anything to put the life or safety of any individual at risk or risk prejudicing the national security interests of the country;
– Produce a record of deaths that were caused by incidents during the Troubles; and
– Strive, through all it does, to promote reconciliation.  

We expect the Commission to be ready to receive requests from families from the summer of next year. Before then, there is a lot of work to do: getting the premises and computer systems, hiring and training staff, designing how the Commission will carry out its detailed work of reviews, investigations and immunity decisions, making sure the Commission has access to all the information it needs from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the security services and others.

You can find out more about all our Commissioners in our section on our Board.

The Commission’s independence, expertise, fairness and equality of approach will play a crucial role in helping ensure its decisions and reports command confidence, so it’s vital that our Commissioners bring demonstrable specialist skills and experience into the Commission to help us achieve our aims.

The Commission has been set up to operate independently of the Northern Ireland Executive, the UK Government and any other body. We will be based in locations that allow us to deliver our sensitive work securely, confidentially and in a way that is accessible to you. Our people are being recruited openly from a wide range of backgrounds, with proper consideration of any potential conflicts of interest.

In addition to police powers, we have wide-ranging statutory powers to require all public bodies, including the government and the security services to provide us with all information we need to carry out our work, and to require any person to come to the Commission to provide information.  Where necessary, we may issue fines and in some cases apply to the courts if information we need is being withheld from us by any organisation or individual.

We know many people have raised concerns about the Legacy Act which establishes the Commission. Now that the Act has become law, it is set to change the way in which legacy cases are treated and the new independent Commission will be at the centre of that new approach.

Now that the Legacy Bill has become law and the Commission is formally established, we will complete the work of putting in place the processes and policies we will need to do our work. And we will be recruiting the staff that we will need, including experienced investigators, trained family engagement support staff and expert archivists to retrieve records. We expect to begin accepting requests to carry out reviews, including investigations, into legacy cases from the summer of 2024.

£250 million of dedicated funding has been provided to implement the proposals in the Legacy Bill. This will be drawn on annually to form a budget for the Commission based on what it needs over its lifetime.

We’re identifying a permanent HQ for the Commission in Belfast. Once this is established, we’ll share more information about how you can engage with the Commission. This is one of the things we are keen to hear people’s views on in this survey.