Peter Sheridan explains the importance of the new Northern Ireland legacy body and what he hopes to achieve as its commissioner for investigations
Peter Sheridan in Ulster University’s Magee campus in Derry. In December, Sheridan will begin a new job as commissioner for investigations at the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery. Photograph: Joe Dunne
“I remember seeing other police officers being blown off their feet, and the bodies of the two detectives on the grass.”Three comforting slow cooker dinners for busy days In the geography of Sheridan’s experience, there are many such landmarks. “I remember the murder of Paddy Shanaghan down in Castlederg. I drive that way to Fermanagh, and every time I pass the spot on the road, I could tell you exactly where the car was when he was shot dead.”
Sheridan gestures again towards the spot where Jarvis, Wilson and Bennison died. “This, and Paddy Shanaghan, and all of those . . . however challenging and difficult this is going to be, it’s our responsibility in this generation to deal with it. The legislation has been deeply controversial – most of all, the provision that will offer conditional amnesties for perpetrators – and has been widely opposed, not least by the families of victims, who say it closes off avenues to truth and justice and is perpetrator- rather than victim-centred.
“If the courts have said it’s not compliant then I don’t see how we could do anything other than walk away from it. As to prosecutions, there should be a “thorough investigation” for those cases where it is a possibility, and a file sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, says Sheridan. “I don’t see the commission being able to take that decision about immunity until that’s resolved in the court . . . we’re very conscious at the minute that there are legal cases under way so it would not seem to make sense for the commission to be making decisions about conditional immunity that could eventually be overturned in the court.”
“First of all,” says Sheridan, “People who know me know that’s not the way I’ve done my work over this last 40, 45 years”. “Am I not entitled to that parity of esteem that says I can be a commissioner, or does that parity of esteem only go so far?” In some ways, he says, it is about “separating . . . out the legislation which is still contentious and still challenging and the people who have said, we will do our best, because whatever happens after the result of the courts, our will be compliant with the law”.
Some of the opposition, says Sheridan, comes “because of how the Act originated, and it was seen by many people, particularly here , as about the veterans, it wasn’t about Stephen McConomy, it wasn’t about other victims in Northern Ireland. That has, if you like, contaminated it from the word go. If there is a genuine belief in reconciliation, he says, opening archives and giving as much information as possible “is a way of fixing” the thorny problem of legacy, which Sheridan warns “isn’t going to go away” otherwise.
Sheridan puts it a different way: “Our politicians have struggled for 40 years, governments have struggled, so there’s no perfect system, there’s no perfect answer in this, the legislation isn’t perfect.
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