Government to decide next month on legal challenge to UK’s Legacy Bill

The Government will make a decision before mid-January about whether it will take a case to the European Court of Human Rights over the UK’s Legacy Bill, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Mr Varadkar said the Bill was introduced without “meaningful consultation with those most affected” including victims of the Troubles, civil society and Northern Ireland political parties, and “no genuine engagement with the Irish Government”.

The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill passed a final vote in Westminster in September, after amendments which would have altered the conditions required for a perpetrator to receive immunity for prosecution and included consent from victims’ families were rejected.

Speaking during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil on Wednesday, Mr Varadkar said the Government had received detailed and comprehensive legal advice from Attorney General Rossa Fanning which was “an essential contribution to our consideration of the next steps.

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“We’re fully aware that the initiation of an inter-state case would be a significant step that would have to be done on solid grounds,” he said.

[ UK laws dealing with Troubles legacy face legal challenge in North ]

The Fine Gael leader said that legacy should not be seen as a sectarian issue “because it is not”, and also shouldn’t be couched in the terms of “orange and green or unionist versus nationalist”.

Mr Varadkar said the Government had tried the diplomatic approach of persuasion and dissuasion, ”trying to encourage, cajole and convince” the UK government not to proceed with the legislation.

“I stand over that approach because if we do have to take a harder line, we can at least demonstrate that we exhausted all other options before taking a harder line,” he said.

The Taoiseach said a decision would have to be made before January 15th and the Attorney General’s advice was clear on that.

Mr Varadkar said he and the Tánaiste had some meetings with the AG to “work out the next steps” and any decision would have to go to Cabinet before it could be announced in the Dáil.

[ Ireland must ‘urgently’ decide whether to challenge Troubles legacy law before court deadline ]

He added that he believed it was a “sad truth” that he wasn’t sure taking a case against the UK Government would lead to them backing down.

“It might in fact play into the hands of people in British politics, who will see this as another reason for them to withdraw entirely from the European Convention on Human Rights and we have to bear that in mind too,” he said.

Mr Varadkar was responding to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, who said the only way that Ireland could put a stop to the Legacy Bill was for the Government to bring a case to the European Court of Human Rights.

“This case has to be taken before January 18th. There are 36 days for this Government to take this case,” he said. “For the last number of weeks and months the Government have been making excuses in relation to this. The Christmas holidays are going to take at least 14 days out of that 36 days. You have literally three weeks to make a decision on this.”

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