Professor Kieran McEvoy has just delivered the 36th Annual William Nash Memorial Lecture at Campion College, University of Regina, Canada.
His lecture was entitled ‘Truth, Justice & Reconciliation: Dealing with the Past in Northern Ireland’.
He began by providing a brief analysis of the background to conflict in Northern Ireland and the development of the Peace Process in the course of the last two decades.
The main body of the lecture then set current attempts to ‘Deal with the Past’ in context – looking in turn at ‘critical junctures’ such as the Good Friday Agreement, the Consultative Group on the Past, the Haass-O’Sullivan negotiations and, more recently, the Stormont House Agreement.
In the final analysis he spoke to wider themes concerning justice, truth and reconciliation and concluded with consideration of the political will, resources, legal imagination and tenacity required to deliver a sustainable ‘deal’ on ‘dealing with the past’.