RELATIVES for Justice has criticised Northern Ireland Office (NIO) plans to convene multi-party talks on dealing with the legacy Troubles.  

The talks aim to engage parties in a further period of negotiation, despite their having made prior legacy commitments under the Stormont House Agreement. 

Mechanisms in the agreement included the setting up a Historical Inquiries Unit, an Independent Commission on Information Retrieval, an Oral History Archive and the creation of an Implementation and Reconciliation Group.

Under the 2020 New Decade, New Approach agreement, all parties, including the British and Irish governments, agreed to legislate for Stormont House within 100 days, but have failed to do so.  

The NIO have said talks between the main Stormont parties and the British and Irish governments will aim "to find an agreed way forward", with legislation being introduced by the end of autumn.

Responding to the statement, Relatives for Justice CEO, Mark Thompson, said the core agreements made at Stormont House "must be implemented in full".

“The objective is to enhance and develop these agreements rather than reduce or undermine them," he said.

“Victims have rights and the British government have domestic and international legal obligations to uphold those rights. These rights cannot be negotiated or bargained away.

“This must be achieved through effective, independent, and impartial investigations without any vested interest, and it is the task of both governments to ensure that those rights are delivered to victims without further delay or prevarication.

“The British government can no longer rely on the vexatious claim that British army veterans are being treated unfairly through recycled investigations. The truth is the British state has benefited from de facto impunity to date and has never faced the rigour of the law.

“Prevarication, obfuscation and delay can no longer be the order of the day for the British government, the time has come to implement Stormont House and uphold the legal rights and human rights of all victims to the conflict, irrespective of their background.”

The NIO said upcoming talks will be held  "on an inclusive basis".

It said the meetings will ensure that "interests and perspectives of victims and survivors" will be "central to the discussions."