I HAVE a lot of time for this Irish government, not least for the support it gives to a variety of Northern Ireland community groups that are (genuinely) engaged in tortuous, and sometimes dangerous, work on reconciliation.

However, to date it’s been a different story where the past is concerned.

I’m afraid its attitude on that front has been strikingly similar to that of our many exclusive-victimhood claimants.

Hopefully this latest legacy initiative by the Irish and British governments will prove to be different, but the signs are not good.

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Being determinedly partitionist, the initiative allows the Irish to act as neutral bystander with only the British (and, by extension, northern Prods) under scrutiny.

This would be laughable if legacy weren’t so serious an issue.

Are we really to believe that Irish security forces didn’t have multiple agents in at least one of the major paramilitary groups active during the Troubles?

Or, if they did, that their agents were always impeccably behaved? Were rogue cops only a northern thing?

And then there’s the Republic’s “political offence” exemption law that existed throughout the Troubles. How can this not be considered an important part of the Troubles........

© The Irish News