The headlines are bleeding again. Families of IRA victims are standing on the steps of government buildings, clutching photographs of the dead, while headlines scream about the "heartless" refusal of the state to open yet another inquiry. The narrative is as predictable as it is exhausting: the government is hiding something, the victims are being silenced, and justice is a flickering candle being snuffed out by a bureaucratic boot.
It is time to say the quiet part out loud. The refusal to grant new inquiries is not an act of state-sponsored cruelty. It is an act of brutal, necessary mercy.
The obsession with "truth recovery" in Northern Ireland has become a self-sustaining industry that prioritizes the performance of investigation over the reality of resolution. We have spent decades chasing a phantom of "closure" that doesn't exist, fueled by a legalistic fantasy that if we just dig up one more document or interview one more octogenarian, the ghosts will finally stop screaming.
They won't.
The Myth of the Smoking Gun
Most people view an inquiry as a search for a missing puzzle piece. They assume there is a file in a basement or a confession in a priest's ear that will finally link a specific bullet to a specific order.
As someone who has spent years dissecting the mechanics of paramilitary conflict and state intelligence, I can tell you the reality is far more mundane and far more depressing. There is no smoking gun. There is only a thick, gray fog of "controlled chaos."
In the height of the Troubles, intelligence was messy. Informants were playing both sides. Decisions were made in the heat of a three-second window. Documentation was either non-existent or intentionally vague. When a new inquiry is launched, what we actually get is ten years of legal wrangling and a 5,000-page report that ends with the word "inconclusive."
The Saville Report into Bloody Sunday took twelve years and cost nearly £200 million. While it provided a degree of historical clarity, did it "fix" the North? Did it stop the intergenerational trauma? No. It created a blueprint for every other grieving family to demand their own decade-long, multi-million-pound forensic autopsy of the past.
We are currently asking the legal system to perform the job of a therapist, a priest, and a historian all at once. It is failing at all three.
The High Price of Legal Theatre
Let’s talk about the money, because nobody likes to mention the bill when "justice" is on the table. Every pound spent on a public inquiry into a fifty-year-old murder is a pound not spent on the current, crumbling infrastructure of Northern Ireland.
- Mental Health: Northern Ireland has the highest suicide rate in the UK and some of the worst post-traumatic stress statistics in the Western world.
- Education: Segregated schooling remains the norm, ensuring the next generation is raised in the same tribal silos as their grandparents.
- Economic Stagnation: Investment flees from regions that refuse to stop looking in the rearview mirror.
When the government says "no" to an inquiry, they aren't just saving a line item in a budget. They are making a choice—albeit a politically unpopular one—to stop subsidizing the legal profession at the expense of the living. Lawyers are the only ones who truly "win" in the inquiry cycle. They get fat on daily rates while the families get a decade of re-traumatization and a report that ultimately changes nothing about their daily lives.
Why Closure is a Lie
We have been sold a psychological lemon called "closure." The idea is that if you get the "truth," the pain stops.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of grief. If the state tells a woman exactly which IRA volunteer pulled the trigger on her husband in 1974, she does not wake up the next morning feeling "closed." She wakes up with the same empty bed and a new name to hate.
True justice in Northern Ireland is impossible because the scale of the atrocity was so vast and the actors so numerous that the legal system cannot possibly process them all equally. To pursue a handful of high-profile inquiries while thousands of other "ordinary" murders go uninvestigated isn't justice—it’s a lottery.
By refusing new inquiries, the state is finally admitting the limits of its own power. It is admitting that it cannot fix the past. This is an admission of failure, yes, but it is an honest one.
The Inquiry Trap
Imagine a scenario where every family who lost a loved one during the Troubles is granted a full public inquiry.
We would have 3,500 simultaneous investigations. The entire civil service would grind to a halt. The courts would be clogged for a century. The "truth" would come out in such a chaotic, contradictory flood that it would trigger a new wave of sectarian finger-pointing.
The "Lazy Consensus" suggests that "the truth will set us free." In a post-conflict society, the truth is often a gasoline-soaked rag. Everyone has their own version, and everyone is looking for a version that justifies their own side's violence.
The current legal framework—specifically the Legacy Act—has been attacked for closing down paths to justice. But the hard truth is that the "paths" were already dead ends. They were treadmill investigations that kept families walking in place while the world moved on.
The Uncomfortable Truth About State Collusion
The loudest calls for inquiries usually revolve around allegations of state collusion. "The public has a right to know if the police helped the bombers," the activists say.
Of course they did. Everyone knows they did.
In the 1970s and 80s, the security forces were infiltrated, compromised, and often acting on "the enemy of my enemy" logic. We don't need a £50 million inquiry to tell us that intelligence agencies do dirty things in dirty wars. We have the Stevens Inquiries, the De Silva Report, and a mountain of journalistic evidence.
Demanding a new inquiry to "prove" collusion is like demanding an inquiry to prove the sun is hot. It’s a performative demand. It’s about forcing an apology that will never feel sincere enough, from a government that isn't the same one that committed the acts.
Stop Asking the Wrong Questions
People often ask: "How can these families move on without the truth?"
The question is flawed. It assumes "moving on" is a destination reached via a courtroom. It’s not. Moving on is what happens when a society decides that the future of its children is more important than the forensic accounting of its ancestors' sins.
If we want to honor the victims of the IRA, or the UVF, or the Parachute Regiment, we should stop building temporary monuments made of legal paper. We should stop promising families a "day in court" that will only result in a bitter "maybe."
The Actionable Pivot: Radical Acceptance
Instead of inquiries, we should be pivoting toward a model of radical historical acceptance.
- De-Legalize the Past: Move legacy issues out of the courts and into the hands of historians. Let the archives be opened to academics, not barristers.
- Direct Compensation: Instead of spending £100 million on an inquiry, give that money directly to the survivors and the communities that were decimated. No strings. No "truth" required. Just a recognition of loss.
- Mandatory Integration: If the state wants to prove it has learned from the past, it should stop funding the segregation that fueled it. Make every school in Northern Ireland integrated within five years.
The "heartfelt pleas" of relatives are real, and their pain is agonizing. But the kindest thing a government can do is stop pretending it can heal a wound that deep with a gavel.
The inquiry era is over. Not because the government is cruel, but because the truth isn't a cure. It's just a record. And we have enough records.
It is time to stop digging. The holes we are making are only getting deeper.
