The Northern Ireland legacy legislation1 and the debates surrounding it continue to fixate on the legacy aspect to the almost total exclusion of the idea of reconciliation. While a very small part of a particular section of Northern Irish society – namely, lawyers specializing in legacy cases – benefit enormously from that imbalance, the common good aspiration, which is inherent in reconciliation, is hollowed out.
The current Bill aims to replace the former Conservative Government’s Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023. The Conservatives have been sharply critical of the current proposals – in particular, claiming that they will result in a witch-hunt of veterans – and have promised to repeal them if/when they win a general election.2 For his part, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (SoSNI), Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP, has argued that reconciliation cannot be legislated – it ‘has to come from within. It cannot come because somebody passed a law. The aim is to get more answers for more families—that is the whole purpose …’3
This paper suggests that the fact that both sides might be right or wrong means that politics – or, more specifically, the Law – might be the problem: whether Labour enacts the current proposals or the Conservatives return to theirs – if (when) the legislation goes forward, HMG might consider tilting the balance back in favour of reconciliation and away from legacy as lawfare. The modus vivendi might be if something isn’t clearly contributing to reconciliation then it ought to be deprioritized in favour of something that either demonstrably can, or that evidentially benefits those who have suffered the most from the ‘Troubles’ and their legacies. If legislation cannot cultivate reconciliation, then reconciliation ought to be excised from legislation.
Conflict over compromise
The Bill at present is seen by critics to open the door to unending pursuit of veterans in Court. Conservative MPs have argued that by prioritizing legal procedures (investigations, inquisitions, Coronial and civil cases), the government has merely cleared the ground for future litigation: Court being the place of conflict-by-proxy.4
Civil society groups have pointed out the fact that members of the same victims’ families could pursue contradictory paths through the proposed mechanisms – some people preferring investigation and possible prosecution, others preferring information recovery. The issue of who actually constitutes a victim has seemingly been watered down so much, it has become meaningless. Victims’ organizations have suggested that the legislation remains unclear on both counts.5 The WAVE Trauma Centre, which is one of the main victims and survivors’ organizations in Northern Ireland, has been particularly scathing of the proposals, suggesting that trust is a critical element that remains missing.6
“HMG might consider tilting the balance back in favour of reconciliation and away from legacy as lawfare. The modus vivendi might be if something isn’t clearly contributing to reconciliation then it ought to be deprioritized”
The new legislation does not emphasize gender. Curiously, written evidence supplied to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee (NIAC) by bodies such as the Law Society for Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission is also silent on the gendered aspects of victimhood – let alone the burden of responsibility that falls on women in negotiating the types of statutory agencies to which the legislation aims to add more.7
For his part (and the Northern Ireland Office’s) Mr Benn has argued that the original (September 2023) Act’s granting of conditional immunity not only breached international law but, more fundamentally, worked to unpick a kind of ethical commitment that government owed to victims and survivors. For Mr Benn, the idea that allowing perpetrators to get off scot-free militated against the idea that reconciliation could be about laying the past to rest. In Mr Benn’s view, new legislation was clearly needed – he introduced the new ‘Northern Ireland Troubles Bill’ in November 2025.
Hilary Benn and Reconciliation
Mr Benn is clearly interested in reconciliation. It may explain why, after a storied political career — he was first elected in 1999 – he agreed to take up responsibilities for Northern Ireland in a shadow ministerial role only in September 2023 – (becoming Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in July 2024). His tenure in Northern Ireland therefore coincides with the initial legacy Act.8
In Mr Benn’s nearly 1,000 uses of the term ‘reconciliation’ in Parliament, he tends to define it negatively (in a non-pejorative fashion) – namely, reconciliation is the absence of contention.
“Crucially—this is something that the House has to recognise—the 2023 Act failed because it did not command any support in Northern Ireland among victims and survivors, or the political parties. That was no basis for progress or reconciliation.”9
In one reading of Mr Benn’s use of reconciliation, it is almost transactional; reconciliation is measured by the amount, or lack thereof, of community buy-in with legacy policy. Thus, the widespread anger at the notion that terrorists would get immunity in exchange for disclosure militated against the possibility. As he went on to explain, this involves compromise, which was ‘the basis on which the Good Friday agreement was reached, and 71.7% of the people of Northern Ireland gave their support to it. Compromise, of course, is essential in the interests of peace’.10
The conditional immunity offer might have been compatible with reconciliation if people had been willing to compromise their views on the past; but the problem was that that step was too great a demand. Not only was there dissent from Northern Irish political parties and civil society, but
“There was anger from many of those who served in Northern Ireland, who saw immunity as an affront to the rule of law that they had sought to protect, and as implying some sort of moral equivalence between those who served in our armed forces and terrorists. There is no moral equivalence whatsoever between those members of our armed forces who acted lawfully in carrying out their duties, and paramilitaries who were responsible for barbaric acts of terrorism.”11
Undoubtedly Mr Benn is correct in much of this; the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement (B/GFA) was a compromise. It barely touched upon the area of dealing with the past (with good reason, arguably, if it had have incorporated an overarching Truth and Reconciliation Commission there would have been no agreement). Much of the Agreement’s text was about establishing democratic and governmental frameworks for enabling political dialogue within Northern Ireland and between the island of Ireland and Great Britain
The B/GFA’s approach to the legacy of the conflict was also transactional in that it advocated drawing a line under the past for the benefit of future generations. As the second paragraph of the opening Declaration of Support makes clear:
“The tragedies of the past have left a deep and profoundly regrettable legacy of suffering. We must never forget those who have died or been injured, and their families. But we can best honour them through a fresh start, in which we firmly dedicate ourselves to the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance, and mutual trust, and to the protection and vindication of the human rights of all.”12
Benn’s evocation of the support given to the B/GFA works to recall the political compromises involved in nationalists giving up their demands that London (and Washington) would become a ‘persuader for Irish unity’ and unionists acquiescing in a security framework that would allow Irish republicans to disarm gradually. Yet the recalling of the B/GFA is double-edged because where it did develop policy outcomes regarding the legacy of the conflict – the early release of terrorists from gaol, the reform of policing structures – these were highly emotive and directly related to Ulster unionist alienation from the new dispensation. The 71% support masked the fact that a bare majority of unionists (around 53-55% it was estimated, there was no exit polling) voted in favour and that figure quickly diminished when it became clear that decommissioning of terrorist weaponry was a negotiating chip republicans used to leverage pressure on the New Labour government of Tony Blair.13
“The tragedies of the past have left a deep and profoundly regrettable legacy of suffering. We must never forget those who have died or been injured, and their families. But we can best honour them through a fresh start, in which we firmly dedicate ourselves to the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance, and mutual trust, and to the protection and vindication of the human rights of all.”
Legacy and Reconciliation
In the current Troubles Bill, reconciliation is to follow legacy litigation. It is not so much an afterthought as something that occurs when the legacy policy achieves support. The Bill itself aims ‘to make new provision to address the legacy of the Northern Ireland Troubles’. This is a gamble based on society and victims coming on board with the institutions of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery – now known as the Legacy Commission – and the Independent Commission on Information Retrieval (ICIR) either positively and with engagement or through exhaustion and nothing else being available. The remit of the Legacy Commission is to investigate and report on Troubles-related deaths and open prosecutions (‘inquisitions’) if necessary. The ICIR, arguably, retains an element of the amnesty idea. As with the remit of, for example, the Saville Tribunal on Bloody Sunday, it will recover information that would be inadmissible in future prosecutions. It will use that information to compile reports on Troubles-related deaths.
Interestingly, the ICIR has not received the amount of scrutiny in Parliament or in the press that the Legacy Commission has – though, it is not difficult to envisage that it could become the more in demand as victims’ families often have unanswered questions outstanding from previous police (re)investigations such as those completed by the Historical Enquiries Team and the Legacy Information Branch.
These bodies were operationally independent of the police but fell under the responsibility of the chief constable. Their purpose was to find a resolution to outstanding conflict-related killings. The modus operandi was a process-driven investigation, with a final report being handed over to victims’ families. Reconciliation was not part of that resolution. The lacuna within the current legislation regarding reconciliation replicates that methodology.
The word reconciliation appears nine times in the 116-page Bill, but only once does it not refer to the original legislation’s title and that is when it states that the Legacy Commission should promote ‘the principle’ of reconciliation. The entire legislative process (going back to its introduction just before lockdown in March 2020) has been, arguably, misnamed. As Claire Hanna, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, recently told the Commons – reconciliation was not defined in the 2023 iteration, which, she argued, actively undermined peace building: ‘The [2023 Act] was about closing down truth and ensuring that republican and loyalist paramilitaries would again have their crimes retrospectively legalised’.14
However, there is little to say that the new Bill will not do exactly the same. Yes, it allows for prosecutions, but in placing the emphasis on adversarial and confrontational means of retrieving information about the truth of what occurred, it inevitably means that lawyers will draw down the majority – perhaps as much as two-thirds – of the publicly funded kitty. The total amount is yet to be determined but it is usually placed upwards of £1 billion. On the assumption that that would draw legacy to an end over the next decade, a recent Policy Exchange report estimated that
“the total ‘cost of legacy’ in connection with the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ is between £2.2 billion and £2.7 billion, in 2024 prices. This is equivalent to over five years of health capital expenditure in Northern Ireland, or more than the cost of two new hospitals or 70 new secondary schools.”15
“In the current Troubles Bill, reconciliation is to follow legacy litigation. It is not so much an afterthought as something that occurs when the legacy policy achieves support. This is a gamble based on society and victims coming on board with the institutions”
I have previously discussed how the initial proposals on dealing with the past by Sir Kenneth Bloomfield in 1997-98 emphasized reconciliation rather than confrontation.16 That more minimal approach was also much more radical and involved the cultivation of remembrance rather than adversarial battles between different narratives and contending ideologies. The then Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam, believed that around £5 million would have sufficed to enact those aims.17
Decoupling Reconciliation and Legacy
The idea of making a new start on legacy policy was that information about the past could be separated from forensic investigations. In part, this was a response to UK Veterans’ concern that investigations were heavily weighted against the state, despite the fact that terrorists accounted for 90% of the 3,600 murders (60% by republicans and 30% by loyalists) – and that 9% of the remainder were lawful killings that resulted from the carrying out of police and army duties. The new approach has instead argued that the two goals – justice and truth – are indivisible.
As mentioned above, that is a policy decision that effectively places a bet on being proven correct in the long term and sees reconciliation as the culmination of legacy. The elevation of legacy as something to do with information recovery and liability is the direct result of one way of thinking about the Northern Irish divide. As the Northern Irish academic Eamonn O’Kane points out, the problem with highlighting legacy means that ‘all strands need to be implemented at the same time (to avoid any group securing the changes they wish to see but managing to block those they do not support)’. This results in an uneasy stalemate: ‘There appears to be near unanimity that the past needs to be dealt with’, O’Kane continues, but ‘comparatively little support for ideas effectively drawing a line under it’.18
In the current plans it is practically impossible for reconciliation to come before litigation. As the transitional justice approach to peace building was originally formulated, justice would proceed on a break with the past – a discredited regime would be replaced by a new dispensation based on transparency, accountability and the rule of law. Of course, the rule of law never collapsed in Northern Ireland and the B/GFA demonstrated the resilience of electoral democracy against anti-democratic violence. The Conservatives’ emphasis on truth recovery and Labour’s emphasis on justice are, in that respect, two sides of the same coin. But the persistence of process does not necessarily mean that process cannot be delimited – including fixing financial limits on the amount legacy lawyers can draw down from the public purse.
For instance, accessing public money could be ringfenced and made accessible only to law firms that can demonstrate a commitment to non-single-identity work. The principles of balance and non-sectarianism are already deeply embedded in Northern Irish public policy. There is no reason why these could not be extrapolated to include reconciliation work – unless, that is, one is opposed to working across the ethno-religious divide. Amendments to the Bill asking for the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to report at various junctures could be rewritten to delimit any use of public money to benefit just one communal bloc.
At the time of writing, the Northern Ireland Troubles Bill amendment paper runs to 33 pages.19 Those amendments and new clause proposals tend to focus on the recruitment to the institutions or on points of clarity as to when the conflict ended – 1998 or the Hillsborough Agreement of 2010, for instance. Despite the current number of amendments, much of the Bill is clearly still being discussed by MPs – the amendment paper is updated almost daily. Only one new clause, proposed by the Liberal Democrats, tackles what it calls the ‘[d]uty to promote reconciliation’. The new clause states that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland:
“must publish a strategy for the promotion of reconciliation in Northern Ireland arising from and in connection with the implementation of this Act … [setting out how the SoSNI will] (a) support the transition from the legacy of the Troubles to a stable and shared future; (b) foster constructive relationships between different communities in Northern Ireland; and (c) acknowledge the suffering of victims and survivors”.
The proposed reconciliation clause would require the Secretary of State to consult widely – including with the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee – before publishing the strategy. It does not however tackle the reconciliation component with anything approaching a definition or an unpacking of it from the legacy nexus.
“Accessing public money could be ringfenced and made accessible only to law firms that can demonstrate a commitment to non-single-identity work. The principles of balance and non-sectarianism are already deeply embedded in Northern Irish public policy. There is no reason why these could not be extrapolated to include reconciliation work”
The former IRA man turned Sinn Féin critic, Anthony McIntyre has suggested as much in a recent contribution in the Irish News.20 McIntyre argued that ‘there is no compelling reason to insist that curiosity should trump compassion’. McIntyre remains an unrepentant republican; ‘dissenting’ from what he sees as the machinations and dissembling of the current Sinn Féin/IRA trajectory, he was forced to leave Belfast following an orchestrated campaign of intimidation against him and his family. His contribution is nonetheless noteworthy because, unlike many within that leadership or those 200-plus ‘volunteers’ the leadership deemed worthy of receiving ‘comfort letters’, McIntyre served his time in gaol. While victims may rightly view his argument as serving the interests of perpetrators it, therefore, isn’t strictly self-serving.
McIntyre’s argument isn’t completely clear and is written in a rather cryptic style. But it does indicate alternative ways beyond the formalism of what the legacy element has become. Although McIntyre seems to be proposing some kind of return of amnesty or a drawing a line under prosecutions, his argument does point to the need to think about what reconciliation might mean beyond the confines of compromise.
McIntyre’s intervention is useful in suggesting a way to navigate the dead-ends proposed by academics. There seems, for instance, to be zero prospects of republican terrorists admitting that its campaign was wrong. As Professor Rogelio Alonso has pointed out, it is all very well to apologize for suffering but that is meaningless if terrorists can’t admit that they ‘should not have done what they did’ – let alone provide clarity on providing redress and justice.21 Likewise, if reconciliation is hampered by legislation, it is unclear as to whether legislation can facilitate it. If commemoration is unbalanced, then the answer might not be more or even better commemoration.22 McIntyre’s intervention suggests an alternative to recrimination, outbidding and whataboutery. It points to an alternative conceptualization of doing the politics of reconciliation – one that seemingly requires reconciliation to be diluted of politicians and lawyers.
Substantive Reconciliation
As every first year Politics student learns, democracy can be defined procedurally or substantively: It is critical that elections are free and fair, that individual rights are respected and justice is dispensed without fear or favour. But equality of opportunity doesn’t necessarily lead to equality of outcome and vested and monied interests can skew the terms on which debates occur. In other words, even with the most robust and transparent procedures not all voices are equally resonant nor everyone’s participation as equally efficacious in democratic outcomes.
The paradox of democracy is that it has to be both procedural and substantive. Reconciliation is analogous – it can be both a process and an event. At the moment, the Troubles legislation is primarily presenting it in mechanistic terms: it is something that, given the correct application of checks and balances, can be arranged as an output. This is undoubtedly necessary – reconciliation, is after all, a noun, it is something that can be defined and is an end-goal that can be reached. After the institutions have completed their tasks, the event of reconciliation will seemingly be possible.
But reconciliation is also a (transitive) verb: it is open-ended; less of a contract, it is an agreement to move forward in a new relationship, a new environment or a new dispensation. Reconciliation, in this reading, is something substantive that needs to be encouraged and cultivated. The risk is that the inherent fragility of the latter can be forestalled or even made impossible by the former – that old sores will be scratched at by lawyers or political point-scoring will remain the default setting of elected representatives (as is their right), and the toxicity of the past will poison the well of good will and hoped-for reconciliation in the future.
The policy debate surrounding the past in Northern Ireland is both expanding but still narrowly constrained – or, to mix metaphors, it’s expending much energy without ever really moving forward (and, indeed, depending on your perspective, it may actually be sliding backwards). It is becoming more and more formalistic and process-driven while moving further and further away from society; it is becoming captured by politicians and lawyers but drifting further from victims and survivors; it is becoming less and less the preserve of those victims and survivors and more the proprietorship of legacy lawyers.
Recalibrating the policy towards substantive reconciliation does not mean forgoing compromise; it means foregrounding it by basing it on cross-community practices rather than a narrow, single-identity ethos. At the minute, this is not happening. The almost complete emphasis on legacy litigation means that the onus of reconciliation will fall on victims, requiring them to work through a legal labyrinth for the uncertain benefit of society. In that this is the case, the process of legacy risks becoming a punishment. Rebalancing policy back in favour of reconciliation means lifting that weight from the shoulders of those who suffered and continue to endure the legacy of violence.
ENDNOTES
1. The 2025 version of the Bill and supplementary documentation are available at https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/4022/publications; accessed on 29 January 2026.
2. Alex Burghart, ‘If need be to protect veterans and prevent wounds of the past being reopened, we’ll scrap Labour legacy plan’, Newsletter, 30 January 2026. Available at https://app.newsletter.co.uk/story/5496463/content.html; accessed on 2 February 2026.
3. Hilary Benn at the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, 22 October 2025. Available at https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/16552/html/#:~:text=Some%20of%20this%20is%20to,agreed%20with%20the%20Irish%20Government.; accessed 2 February 2026.
4. See, for instance, the contributions of Conservative MPs in Parliament: Hansard, ‘Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, 18 November 2025’. Available at https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2025-11-18/debates/5E328786-BF54-4072-BA80-FD31AC025AFA/details; accessed on 29 January 2026.
5. See SEFF [South-Eastern Fermanagh Foundation], ‘Supplementary written evidence submitted by SEFF, relating to the Government’s new approach to addressing the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland’, October 2025; evidence presented to the NIAC. Available at https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/151713/pdf/; accessed on 2 February 2026.
6. WAVE Trauma Centre ‘Written evidence submitted by Wave Trauma Centre, relating to The Government’s new approach to addressing the legacy of the past in Northern Ireland inquiry’, July 2025. At ibid.
7. Evidence at ibid.
8. Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP was appointed to the shadow Cabinet on 4 September 2023; the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill 2023 received Royal Assent on 18 September 2023.
9. Hansard, ‘Northern Ireland Troubles Bill, 18 November 2025’, col. 659.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. The Belfast [Good Friday] Agreement available at https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/619500728fa8f5037d67b678/The_Belfast_Agreement_An_Agreement_Reached_at_the_Multi-Party_Talks_on_Northern_Ireland.pdf; accessed on 29 January 2026.
13. See Cillian McGrattan, Northern Ireland, 1968-2008: The Politics of Entrenchment (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010), p. 168; the unionist ‘Yes’ vote of 55% in May 1998 had fallen to 32.9% by October 2002.
14. Hansard, ‘Northern Ireland Troubles: Legacy and Reconciliation’, 21 January 2026. Available at https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2026-01-21/debates/FA8BBF2D-5828-40BE-BA72-8A7911547855/NorthernIrelandTroublesLegacyAndReconciliation; accessed on 29 January 2026.
15. Jeffery Dudgeon and Graham Gudgin, ‘The £2 billion+ cost of legacy in Northern Ireland: Measuring the financial burden on the United Kingdom’, 10 February 2025. Available at https://policyexchange.org.uk/publication/the-2-billion-cost-of-legacy-in-northern-ireland/; accessed on 29 January 2026.
16. Cillian McGrattan, ‘Going against the grain of the GFA on legacy in Northern Ireland’, Policy Brief, November 2025. Available at https://policybrief.org/briefs/the-legacy-of-the-troubles-joint-framework-policy-divorced-from-politics/; accessed on 29 January 2026.
17. Mo Mowlam, Momentum: The Struggle for Peace, Politics and the People (London: Coronet, 2003), p. 243. Five million pounds in 1997 is equivalent to around £12 million in 2026.
18. Eamonn O’Kane, The Northern Ireland Peace Process: From Armed Conflict to Brexit (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021) p.219.
19. Northern Ireland Troubles Bill Amendment Paper, 28 January 2026. Available at https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/59-01/0310/amend/ni_troubles_rm_cwh_0128.pdf; accessed on 29 January 2026.
20. Anthony McIntyre, ‘Truth, recrimination and the value of a little compassion’, Irish News, 12 January 2026. Available at https://www.irishnews.com/opinion/anthony-mcintyre-truth-recrimination-and-the-value-of-a-little-compassion-E527UPLNIZGXRC7H2DJHMRCR2U/; accessed on 29 January 2026.
21. Rogelio Alonso, ‘If ETA can say sorry why can’t Sinn Féin?’, Irish Times, 9 December 2021. Available at https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/if-eta-can-say-sorry-why-can-t-sinn-fein-1.4750094; accessed on 2 February 2026.
22. See, for instance, the written evidence supplied to the NIAC by Kieran McEvoy; Giada Lagana; and Margaret Scull and Simon Prince respectively. Available at https://committees.parliament.uk/work/8761/the-governments-new-approach-to-addressing-the-legacy-of-the-past-in-northern-ireland/publications/written-evidence/?page=2; accessed on 2 February 2026.
