Peadar Tóibín
Meath West · Aontú · Ireland
“Lonely Planet. It did a review of Dublin and stated, "Once Dublin’s grand boulevard, O'Connell St has struggled with decline". It stated that vacant buildings, derelict upper floors and long-stalled redevelopments leave this part looking neglected while retail has shifted elsewhere and been replaced by fast food shops that dilute its char…”
“The Irish people are a generous and decent people and have been over the past number of years, with the provision of supports to people from Ukraine who are fleeing the war. This is right and just. The war unleashed on Ukraine is absolutely wrong. Aontú will support the reduction in the rate of payment under the scheme.”
“I am very disappointed to see that the Government, the Social Democrats, the Labour Party, the Green Party and People Before Profit will vote against an amendment that wants to means test the payment, as an amendment also did on the previous occasion, and put it on a level footing with other housing assistance payments.”
“Landlords are rational and they will make economic decisions to best suit themselves. Landlords have been more inclined to take on Ukrainian tenants over Irish tenants in recent years. This system is discriminatory. It gives an advantage to guests in the country over the people who have lived here for most of their lives.”
“Anyone who sat the leaving certificate economics paper just a few weeks ago will know that demand also has a role. It determines what rents are, the price of houses, etc. It is physics and maths and not ideology. We need to get to a situation where we equalise supply with demand.”
“A global study by TomTom indicated that it is the 38th most congested city globally, behind cities such as London, Toronto and Rome. The task force indicated that the Cork Luas system would be built. That Luas system is in planning and that planning is taking a long while.”
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“The homeless crisis in Ireland has reached a historic and harrowing breaking point for so many families. The figures currently show that 16,734 people are trapped in emergency accommodation. That is a record-shattering figure, representing a 12% increase year on year. However, it is actually only a fraction of the truth if we add in rough sleepers and the 290,000 hidden homeless - the families who are squeezed into garden sheds, those who are couch surfing and living in overcrowded flats or the adults who are in their 30s, regressing into childhood bedrooms because this State has outsourced the right to a shelter to what is market forces. The Ombudsman for Children has documented many complaints and reveals what I would call a systematic institutionalisation of children in this State.”
“The idea that in some way getting rid of independence and putting another individual of the HSE in control of an office for investigations that are to happen in the HSE is backwards. It is giving the power to investigate to the organisation that is accused of the wrongdoing.”
“Already, there are people within the HSE refusing to work with the confidential recipient or get into things with her. Already, that is happening within the HSE.”
“What is happening here at the moment is a serious scandal. This country has a really bad record in terms of standing up for people with disabilities and learning difficulties. Many of them have been abandoned for a long period of time. State bodies have a history of defending their institutions against those individuals who have been wronged. That is a record that is peppered right throughout the State bodies in this country. Look at the Brandon and Emily cases. The Brandon case exposed 100 incidents of sexual abuse and other abuse against people with intellectual disabilities in Donegal. The Emily case involved the rape of a nursing home resident with dementia in this State. We are talking about situations of absolutely grave importance. We are also talking about a serious eradication of that independent power and confidential power.”
“The HSE, which is the primary carer for these individuals, will now be the primary investigator of abuse in that particular sector. These fundamental changes mean that the confidential recipient will basically have no independence. She will come under the office of the chief social worker of the HSE. Essentially, it has made that office answerable to the chief social worker on an operational basis. I ask the Tánaiste here today what independent and confidential pathways will vulnerable patients of the HSE have to get justice and have their situations looked at? Will he make sure this decision is reversed?”
“It was an independent avenue for the public to get issues of wrongdoing resolved. A total of 1,500 formal complaints were made. Thousands of consultations and inquiries were held. Hundreds of vulnerable people who had no other pathway to justice used that system. As a result of new decision within the HSE, shockingly, the powers invested in the Office of the Confidential Recipient will be eradicated. The delegation, which is the legal underpinning of the powers of the confidential recipient, is to be set aside. Without that delegation, the office has no independent powers. The new national framework HSE policy for adult safeguarding in the health and social care sector, which was just announced, has a serious and inherent conflict of interest. The HSE will now be its own de facto regulator.”
“In the aftermath of that, several of the staff faced criminal prosecutions and convictions. Nine were immediately suspended. The scandal triggered multiple national inquiries by HIQA and the HSE. One of the main outcomes of that scandal was the fact the HSE set up safeguarding services and the Office of the Confidential Recipient was created. The then director general of the HSE, Tony O'Brien, said the Office of the Confidential Recipient would, under the terms of the 2004 Act, be a recipient of formal, legal delegation from him, giving her the authority through the health service and the powers invested in the chief executive of the HSE. I have heard shocking news about that office this week. The Office of the Confidential Recipient is to have its powers eradicated.”
“The Office of the Confidential Recipient was founded in 2014 as a result of the Áras Attracta scandal. That scandal was exposed by RTÉ in a documentary called "Inside Bungalow 3". Disturbing undercover footage showed vulnerable adults being mistreated by some staff within that HSE-funded service. It showed inhumane and degrading treatment to residents and several people with intellectual disabilities in that location. Secretly recorded footage showed that staff members were slapping, kicking, force-feeding and physically restraining vulnerable adults while also subjecting them to psychological abuse, such as shouting and demeaning insults. The exposé revealed a systematic culture of neglect and institutional control, where residents were often treated like eternal children and deprived of basic dignity and liberty.”
“A total of 442 doctors were issued with temporary work visas in 2022. Doctors are voting with their feet and leaving this country. This is a fact that nobody in talking about other than Aontú, Some 51% of students in medical schools in this country are from outside Ireland and the EU. They are training here and are likely to return to their home country to practise. We need to make sure that we provide extra GP places but also for people who are likely to work in this jurisdiction.”
“By 3 p.m., he decided to go into accident and emergency. He got treated and came home. The doctor called him and said he could deal with him in ten days' time. I know of another person who spoke to 18 doctors and could not get on their lists on the day they were sick. If you increase universality in terms of access of doctors and GPs at the moment, it will reduce access to GPs currently in this system. There is no doubt about it. If you look at the figures, when GP consultations for children under six were increased, there was a 28% increase in first-year use of that system. The ESRI estimates that free GP care would lead to an additional 2.3 million GP visits annually - a 12% increase. When you do not have an increase in supply in the system, that is going to create major problems. There are two problems in terms of doctors.”
“Where we do offer supports, often the threshold is far too low, and therefore middle-income families who are struggling often fall off that cliff very quickly. If we were to do anything in terms of these funds, it is to focus on low- and middle-income earners and to raise those thresholds in terms of free access to GP services, so that there is not, in a practical sense, anybody who is not accessing healthcare because of an economic reason. The other point in this is that we are in a slow-motion car crash in terms of what is happening to GP access in this country. A total of 70% of GPs cannot take any more people onto their lists. People come into my office on a regular basis who tell me that they cannot get a doctor's appointment. I know of an individual who called a doctor at 10 a.m.”
“This is a well-meaning motion and universality sounds great but I have problems with it. It often redirects funds from low-income families to rich families. Approximately 629,000 people are in poverty in this country. While those individuals are in poverty, I do not think we should be using taxpayers' money to pay for Michael O'Leary's children's healthcare. A woman came into my office recently with a low income. She is waiting months for an operation on her neck. She is losing the function of her hand and her leg. If she does not get this operation soon, she will have to go into care, which is an incredible situation. The funds that we have in this country should be focused on people on low- and middle-incomes. One of the reasons universality is often popular is that there is a welfare cliff and a support cliff in this country.”
“Each one of these children is a citizen of this country, and the job of the education system is to make sure that each of them reaches their full potential, rather than have a situation where they are in a constant battle with the Government. I ask that we have a proper review of this system and match resources with needs throughout the education system.”
“It is cruel to give children a seat at the table and then take away the support they need to sit at that table. The State has spent 22 years in non-commencement of the EPSEN Act as a shield against its own responsibilities. Section 2 is not an aspiration; it is a mandate that these children should receive their education in an inclusive environment. By withdrawing SNA support, the Government made an inclusive environment impossible in certain schools, for certain children. The Government is effectively carrying out a backdoor repeal of their rights, telling these children that their place in mainstream education is conditional on a Department spreadsheet rather than their legal entitlements. That is a massive mistake for this Government to make.”
“We have a system that does not support children. We have a system that battles children and parents. Just a few weeks ago, parents were forced to sleep outside Leinster House to protest and demand their children's right to education. These are families who have been locked out of education and have received up to 60 rejection letters from schools and children who applied at the age of four to start school and by the age of six had still not secured a school place. That the Department and the State would fail in their constitutional responsibility here is shocking. What is the reward for those children who had to struggle? Once they finally kicked down the door and gained access to the classroom, the Department's first instinct was to pull the rug from under them and slash SNA supports in certain schools.”
“The Government announced its decisions regarding SNAs last week like a wrecking ball. It was an incredible situation where teachers, parents, SNAs and, of course, children were not spoken to. The manner in which the Government presented this information to schools around the country was incredible. It created a wave of stress and panic in many families and many schools last week. The ineptitude of the Government's approach last week was startling and it showed the lack of centrality of families, SNAs and teachers in the Government's plans for this space, as if its plans are divorced from the people they are meant to affect and help in the future. I welcome the Government's U-turn on this but this is a result of that ineptitude. The reality is that special education in this country is a national scandal.”
“Locking Ireland into these regulations with a clear history of Government inability to even implement the laws that exist will expose the country significantly to penalties in the future. That is a big problem and a big worry.”
“I mentioned earlier the 2% successful return rate under the Dublin III regulation of people who were living here but who had applied for asylum in other countries. A reply to a parliamentary question by the Minister this week showed that half of the deportation orders issued by the Government are still not being implemented either in a voluntary fashion or an enforced fashion. The majority of deportation orders in this country are still not being implemented, which is an incredible situation. These are the weaknesses. Anther weakness is the Government is putting adult asylum seekers into children's accommodation, which is quite incredible and with devastating effects.”
“The Minister mentioned that people voted for European integration and co-operation. That is absolutely true but there has been significant creep in terms of EU control on a range of different issues in recent years. EU integration is not always a good thing. The EU often makes decisions that are not in our interests. The Mercosur agreement is a full example of that. The Minister talks about us making a democratic decision here. The Parliament on College Green made a democratic decision to wind itself up at that particular time. The question is: what direction are those democratic decisions pointing in? These are democratic decisions pointing in a reduction of our own sovereignty. That is the case. The Bill exposes this country to fines and costs into the future.”
“However, if you outsource that to the likes of the EU, you will not be able to manoeuvre as deftly to situations that arise in the future. That is at the heart of the difficulty within this particular Bill. There are good things within this and there are logical changes within this but most of those could be achieved by the Government voluntarily entering those aspects of the Bill.”
“As a result of different countries doing different things with their asylum processes, there are shifts in the direction of people and people are moving as a result of different regimes' experiences throughout the European Union. It is really important there is some confidence given to people that where we have a law and a reasonable right to return people to the country where they first applied for asylum, that is actually actioned. That is not the case at the moment. On the sovereignty issue that is at the heart of this particular Bill, that remains the case. Nobody knows the future but if you have self-determination on a particular issue, you can actually change your laws and approaches to deal with whichever situation arises.”
“I submitted a parliamentary question on the current law, the Dublin III regulation, shows that about 2% of the people who were entitled to return to other countries and who have applied for asylum in other countries initially were actually returned by this Government. Even with the laws the Government has, it is not implementing those laws. Creating new laws does not make certain it will actually implement them either. In my constituency office at the moment, we have a lot of people coming into the office - who we are helping - who have applied for asylum first in Italy and are now in Ireland. Last year, it was people who applied for asylum first in Sweden who are now in Ireland.”
“The reason we have no exit checks coming into this country is that we have a Border in the middle of our island. The only way to actually resolve this whole situation is not with this particular Bill. This is only a minor part of it. The vast majority of it is regularising who is moving from the island of Britain onto the island of Ireland. That is not just a chuckle. That is not just a difficult situation that can never be resolved. It is a real fact that has to be dealt with at some stage by this House. It is bigger than this Bill. It is five or six times bigger than this Bill in actual numbers. That is one thing that pretty much everybody is missing when they talk about this issue. The second issue here is we also need to make sure that we realise laws without enforcement mean nothing.”
“That is worrisome and it needs to be fixed. The other aspect to this is that to deal with this issue and not look at the 85% of people coming through Britain is a problem. We need to go to Britain and to the Government in London to try to work out a process that when a person wants to apply for an application for asylum here in Ireland, they do so when they move to the island and vice versa because there are flows in both directions. It is in London's best interest to be able to know who is coming onto their island and it is in our best interest to know who is coming onto our island. One of the questions I often ask the Minister is how many people actually leave when they get a deportation order and the stock answer at this stage is we have no exit checks.”
“As the Minister knows, the vast majority of people in the country want an asylum process that provides help to those who need help and returns home those who do not need help. That should be the basis and logic of any asylum system - one that offers compassion to those who are fleeing war and violence but one where common sense is used in the system for those who are trying to use the asylum process for economic reasons. One of my major problems with this particular Bill is that it only deals with the sideshow in terms of the numbers of people coming into the country. The vast majority of people coming into the country are coming from Britain, through the North of Ireland and into this State. At least 85% are coming that way.”
“There will be significant push-back, I believe, if access to social media is dependent on every individual within society providing materials like passports, etc., to social media companies. For all the critics there are of social media, social media is a public good. I have a different suggestion, and that is to stop young people having smartphones. That is easier to regulate and provide under law. It would go some way in reducing access to the content about which we all have a concern in this Chamber.”
“First, the Government’s approach to this is shockingly poor and one-dimensional. It does not cover all of the Internet threats to children at the moment. When it comes to the Government’s plan to create a digital ID, there is no real detail. It is not well thought out and there has been no consultation with stakeholders. I have heard some of the Taoiseach’s party colleagues mention a public service card maybe being at the heart of this. Given that the Government has already broken the law twice with a public service card, I do not think that is a logical idea. The idea that we would mandatorily collect facial biometric data from millions of citizens is an invasive thing in a liberal democracy.”
“In the context of our child protection laws, there are dozens of men on a regular basis before our courts who are found with thousands of images of children, abusive material, and videos and photographs of the most serious and explicit nature. On a monthly basis, these individuals get suspended sentences in this country. When it comes to the Government’s initiative in this regard, I am asking the Taoiseach for an holistic, coherent approach to all Internet content for the protection of children.”
“Ana was violently attacked, sexually assaulted and murdered in an abandoned house in Lucan in 2018 by two boys aged 13. An examination of Boy A’s phone revealed that there were 12,000 images on it, the vast majority of which were pornographic in nature. I will not mention some of that content because there are children in the Gallery. You would imagine that particular murder and sexual assault would have jolted the Government into action to protect children from this material, but since then there has been tumbleweed in relation to this material. When we launched our Bill, we got measured tones of shock from the Taoiseach and others, but we got no action on the issue at all. With all the talk of social media and the serious problems in that regard, there is a bigger problem about which there is no talk or action.”
“Aontú produced a Bill five years ago that sought to ban the provision of hardcore pornographic material to children. Hardcore pornography companies, some of which operate in this city as part of the Government’s foreign direct investment policy, are providing hardcore material to children. Children experts from all over the world are saying that consumption of hardcore pornographic material by children as young as ten is leading to an increase in sexual violence against women. Indeed, incidents of children sexually abusing other children have significantly increased in this country in recent years. The law, as it stands, is making victims and perpetrators out of children because we are not protecting children from this content. The Ana Kriégel case was one such horrific case.”
“Today it has been announced that the Government intends to introduce age restrictions on social media. Most parents around the country will be in favour of that. I have spoken to many children around this and they have said they could do without social media if none of their peers had it. It is the fear of being left out that is the biggest issue for a lot of children in relation to this. I recognise that screens have radically changed childhood in the past ten years: from 24-hour bullying to unhealthy, passive physical inactivity; and from isolation and loneliness to violent pornographic content on their phones on a regular basis. Social media is made as addictive and sticky as possible, and even adults find it very difficult to handle social media.”
“The issue we have in the main for workers at present is the fact this city is the most congested in Europe. The average speed of traffic is slower than it was in the 19th century with horses and carts because of a lack of public transport. We really need to focus on that.”
“As a TD, during Covid, trying to get in touch with a civil servant and communicate with a person was nearly impossible for years when trying to get simple work done in those situations. Young people learn less when they work remotely because the natural flow of communication in the situation is not there. They find it harder to impress their managers and develop in a business in a working-at-home situation. Remote working hubs are a good hybrid solution in many ways because they get people out of their homes and into a collegial working environment. It also means that people are located locally. I understand that, in fairness to it, Deputy Lawlor's Bill has significant protections for employees and I appreciate that it allows for the WRC to make decisions, although I would be cautious to see how this would work in practice.”
“In my experience, many employees do get the right to work at home because they have more influence and power in this market given that there is nearly full employment. There are also costs to this and that should be recognised. In some situations, it does lead to a fall in productivity. In some situations, the home is full of distractions in terms of family, pets and so on. It can also lead to a fall in communication. Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp and Zoom are not rich forms of communication. In-person communication is a far richer way for people to engage. Human relationships are very important for the functioning of any business and on many occasions this can be done in person far better. I have noticed in the past that at-home working can cause many difficulties.”
“Where an employee can work at home, it should be facilitated. It can be a massive plus for a worker. It can reduce stress. Obviously, it can reduce the cost of the daily commute, and in certain cases, it can lead to a significant increase in productivity. It can also be good for the local community as it brings people back into local towns and villages during the day. We do live in a city state, unfortunately, where people are commuting from Connacht, Ulster and Munster into Dublin on a daily basis. In many small villages and towns in this country, you could play hurling on the main street in the middle of the day with the lack of traffic and the fact there is nobody there. It is an employee's market at the moment.”
“We have been stuck in this shocking, damaging, Groundhog Day conversation for the past ten years about Governments' inability to build the most important priority need that a family has, and that is a roof over their heads. My worry is we will be here in another five years having the same old staid conversation between the two ideologically opposed groups. Nobody can think creatively about removing the barriers facing young families in terms of housing.”
“The RTB Bill was designed to make homebuilding more viable, for sure, by pushing up rents, but it put the pressure on the tenants to pay for that viability. We believe it should put the pressure on the taxpayer to pay for that viability. It reduced VAT on the building of apartments. Why does it not reduce VAT on the building of houses? The same logic is there, except the viability question comes into play for families rather than for investment funds. In other jurisdictions, such as the North of Ireland, there is no VAT on family homes. The Government should be looking at that issue. Those are three examples of the Government putting in place barriers to the building of homes.”
“For at least ten years, this country was second from bottom in European terms for infrastructural spend - only Romania was worse. Uisce Éireann was before us in the committee recently. I asked its representatives when the gaps blocking the building of homes would be filled so homes could be built. They said it would take until 2050. There is a shocking lack of serviced zoned land in this country. Again, that is down to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The third barrier is viability. If we cannot make building a house viable, houses simply will not be built. Incredibly, 30 of the top 50 construction companies in this country are working abroad and sending their workers abroad because it is not viable to build in the Irish market.”
“Until a couple of months ago, nobody but Aontú was talking about this. The Government has started to talk about it recently. It is within the Government's ability to fix that issue and it has been refusing to fix it. We have the highest number of judicial reviews. The greater Dublin drainage project is an example. Some 100,000 homes depended on it and it was ten years caught up in the planning system. I know of planning applications 30,000 pages long, needing trucks or vans to bring them into a local authority, and of four separate formats for a planning application to deal with four separate agencies. That issue is the Government's fault. It has created it and allowed it to happen. The second issue is the lack of infrastructure.”
“We believe strongly a bird cannot fly on one wing. The solution needs to involve both delivering public housing and fixing the broken private housing system. The truth of the matter is that there is a number of significant barriers to young couples buying homes. Most of those barriers are in the gift of the Government. It is not rocket science. These barriers can be overcome. There is incompetence in the Government in terms of overcoming them at the moment. That is why it is so frustrating to see the damaging fallout from the housing crisis throughout society. The first issue is red tape and bureaucracy. For years, Governments have been layering red tape and bureaucracy onto the system. The Opposition, in the main, has been shouting for more. We are the slowest for planning, licensing, permitting, tendering and judicial review.”
“We see that in schools, with many not getting the necessary number of children into junior and senior infants. The housing crisis debate in this Chamber has been extremely limited for the past five years. It has been between a Government allergic to the building of public houses and an Opposition which has pretty much ignored the building of private houses. That limited debate has contributed to the severity of the housing crisis. We in Aontú believe a society needs to have both functioning properly in order to deliver housing. The Minister of State is shaking his head. A number of years ago, I rang Meath County Council to ask how many public houses were built in the State at that time. There were four in that year. For a decade, nearly a generation, Governments stopped building public houses in this State.”
“The housing crisis that has been the responsibility of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and now the Independents in government is a crisis that is ripping apart the fabric of Irish society. Communities are suffering significantly across the country during this housing crisis. Obviously, those most affected are the 17,000 people who are currently homeless in this State. Thousands of other people are forced to stay in their families' box rooms just to survive. The GAA generation has been forced to emigrate, in large part. It is incredible that we have never had such a level of jobs but, at the same time, young people are being forced to emigrate. The birth rate is falling significantly as a result of many families putting off having children or not being able to have children at all.”
“A person who started work when Noel Dempsey promised this project will have retired before the project is even finished, and that is if there are no judicial reviews or any change in the economy in the meantime. Will the Taoiseach commit to a construction date before 2030, or at the very least, will he commit that the Navan to Drogheda rail line, which is a fully functional rail line, will be retasked and repurposed for passenger use?”
“Hundreds of thousands of people are living in commuter hell in this country. Hundreds of thousands of people are now spending four hours a day travelling to and from work. They are being charged higher taxes on their fuel and higher tolls for the pleasure of doing this. In Meath, 60,000 people have no option but to use their cars because of the lack of public transport. The Taoiseach's friend Noel Dempsey promised in 1994 that a rail line would be built. There is no construction date and no ring-fenced funding for the project. It has not been listed in the Government's national development plan for construction to start before 2030. The planning is on the go for sure but completion at the very earliest will be in 2036. That is 42 years from concept to completion.”
“Phase 1 of the Nayagam report is complete but parents have been refused sight of it. Why have the recommendations of the Nayagam report not even been published at this stage? Why are parents receiving redacted documents relating to their children? In terms of the statutory inquiry, we are no further along. There was a promise that terms of reference would be sorted out within 16 weeks. There are two weeks left of that deadline. The campaign group has not even been brought in to meet the Minister to discuss the terms of reference. When will the terms of reference be provided? It is likely that they will not be provided for at least another three, four or five months. Families are furious at the lack of support they are getting from Government.”
“I want to talk about CHI and the enormous damage being done to children in this country. I received a reply to a parliamentary question today which states that 525 scoliosis operations were cancelled in the past four years. That figure has doubled within just three years. Half of the reasons were given as clinical but we know that Harvey Morrison Sherratt was taken off the waiting list for clinical reasons. That is a very broad brush. We also know that 20% of the cancellations are unaccounted for at the moment. We are not told in which hospitals this is happening and we are also told there has been an increase in the number of emergencies. That leads me to believe there is a capacity issue if those emergencies are knocking existing operations off the chart. The information that has been provided to parent is damagingly slow.”
“Motions have been passed a number of times in this House demanding the British Government make the necessary files on this available and it has refused to do so. Denise Mullen is a former Aontú councillor from Dungannon. At the age of four, she stood at her house while her father was shot dead by the Glenanne gang and the east brigade of the Tyrone UVF. Her father bled out over hours while she was with him. The O'Dowd brothers live beside me in County Meath. Members of their family were murdered by the Glenanne gang. There is an instinct, especially on the part of the Minister's party leader at times, to focus on IRA actions rather than British actions. At times, there is more political benefit in the coffins created by the IRA than those created by the British Government and that is wrong.”
“I saw the Tories came out recently and said there should not be any case where their veterans are prosecuted. We are only looking for the guilty ones to be prosecuted. We do not want the innocent ones to be prosecuted. There is a problem, in that the Irish Government has let the British Government away with this on many occasions. I am thinking about the Glenanne gang especially. The Glenanne gang and British security forces were involved in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, the biggest loss of life of the Troubles, which unfolded close to where we are at the moment. In the subsequent investigation in this State, forensics were sent North and disappeared, files went missing and the investigation was closed within ten weeks.”
“This legislation stems from the joint framework document, which is an agreement between the Irish and British Governments. If it proceeds in the manner in which it is going, it will be damaging. I was in Washington DC recently where I spoke to six congressmen and women from the Republican and Democratic Parties about this and they agreed that is a problem with this legislation. There are also concerns about what protections will be given to British army veterans. If those protections are simply that an elderly individual gives evidence at a distance in an electronic format, I do not think people will have difficulty with them. However, we must remember a big section of the British media and political establishment wants to protect their veterans.”
“It is not that we do not know what the likely outcome is going to be because the British Secretary of State, Hilary Benn, has already gone to court numerous times to stop an investigation or inquiry into the murder of Sean Brown. The Brown family have been in and out of court, dozens of times at this stage, trying to get an inquiry into what happened to Sean Brown outside Bellaghy football club in the nineties. Yet, now the family has to traipse over to the supreme court in London to fight their case to see if they can get justice. To create legislation that gives a right to a British secretary of state to say "No" to an investigation, when we know this particular individual has already said "No" to investigations, is wrong.”