Independent Reporting Commission: Seventh Report

Tuesday 25th February 2025 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Hilary Benn)]

Today I am laying before Parliament the seventh report from the Independent Reporting Commission (IRC).

The commission was established following the Fresh Start agreement in November 2015 to report on progress towards ending paramilitary activity. The agreement set out the Northern Ireland Executive’s commitments around tackling paramilitary activity and associated criminality, and led to a programme of work to deliver a Northern Ireland Executive action plan.

In the New Decade, New Approach agreement in January 2020, a commitment was made to continue this work, including through a second phase of the Northern Ireland Executive’s programme on paramilitarism, criminality and organised crime.

In this seventh report, which covers 2024, the commission notes that interventions through the Executive programme, alongside policing and criminal justice measures which work to tackle paramilitary criminality, are having a tangible effect on the communities where paramilitaries operate. But the IRC also notes significant concerns relating to continuing paramilitary-linked harms such as intimidation, coercive control, and threats.

The commission has set out a number of recommend-ations on how the effort to tackle paramilitarism and its continued impact in communities can be improved. It also asks the Northern Ireland Executive, the UK Government and the Government of Ireland to ensure that work to tackle paramilitarism remains a high priority beyond the lifetime of the Executive programme.

The commission has again suggested that the UK Government and the Government of Ireland should appoint an independent person to scope out the potential for, and explore what might be involved in, a process to end paramilitarism.

The UK Government and the Government of Ireland have been giving consideration to how progress could be made towards ending paramilitarism, and to the recommendations from the IRC and others, including the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee on this issue. In April 2024, the then UK Government and the Government of Ireland committed to taking forward further work.

The two Governments have agreed to jointly appoint, in the period ahead, within the existing IRC legislative framework, an independent expert to carry out a short scoping and engagement exercise to assess whether there is merit in, and support for, a formal process of engagement to bring about paramilitary group transition to disbandment. This will include examining what could be in the scope of such a formal process.

I want to be clear that this is not the start of a formal process itself. This scoping exercise is also not a part of, or an alternative to, the existing law enforcement and criminal justice measures and the wider effort through the Executive programme to tackle the ongoing violence and harm caused by paramilitary groups. I also want to be clear that no financial offer will be made to paramilitary groups or to the individuals involved in them in exchange for an end to violence and ongoing harms.

I will be writing to the Chair of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee to set out more detail on this.

I would like to express my thanks to the commissioners and the secretariat for their continued work in reporting on progress towards ending paramilitarism.

[HCWS470]