MPs look at how to heal past

A consultation process on how best to deal with the past is beginning

A committee of MPs is to examine how Northern Ireland can best deal with its violent past.

The Northern Ireland Affairs Committee is to consider how the province can learn from other countries who have experienced traumatic events.

Committee chairman Michael Mates has invited individuals and organisations to come forward and give evidence.

The British Government announced in May a consultation process on the best way to heal past wounds.

Mr Mates said the committee had wholeheartedly welcomed that announcement by the Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy.

He added: "The purpose of the inquiry we have announced today is to seek out and illuminate ways which have been used to help resolve similar conflicts elsewhere and which could assist the process of healing society in Northern Ireland."

Paul Murphy consulted with senior figures in Capetown and Pretoria

He said the intention was not to arrive at a "narrow and prescriptive set of recommendations".

"Rather, by illuminating approaches which have had success elsewhere, we hope to make a positive contribution to the desire of the overwhelming majority of the people of Northern Ireland to seek ways of easing the hurt of the last 30 years," he said.

The Northern Ireland Secretary told the House of Commons in May that there was a need to deal with the pain, grief and anger caused by the Troubles.

The following month Mr Murphy travelled to South Africa with Victims Minister, Angela Smith to find out how that country had handled its truth and reconciliation process.

The government has also been looking at other truth and reconciliation processes around the world.

It has been considering other ways of enabling people who lost loved ones during the Troubles or suffered trauma to tell their tale.

The chairman of the Policing Board, Professor Desmond Rea, said in February a commission should be set up.

Last June, Chief Constable Hugh Orde suggested that a type of truth and reconciliation process may be needed to bring closure to the past.

At that time, more than 1,800 killings, half of those carried out during 30 years of the Troubles in the province, remained unsolved.

Mr Orde said the perpetrators of hundreds of unsolved murders were unlikely to be brought to justice.