The Financial Times reported on Monday that Ireland is mulling legal action against a planned UK bill that would offer amnesty to participants in decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
“We have asked for legal advice,” Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin told the paper.
“I’ll get that legal advice in the next fortnight, and then we’ll consider that in terms of what action we subsequently take.”
The proposed proposal, which the UK parliament is debating, would establish a truth and recovery commission that would grant British security and paramilitary forces amnesty in exchange for their cooperation with its investigations.
Dublin is determining if it would violate the European Convention on Human Rights.
The three decades of sectarian conflict known as The Troubles will be included by the measure, which was tabled in May 2022.
The fight over British control in Northern Ireland, which started in the 1960s, resulted in more than 3,500 fatalities.
According to the UK government, there are still about 1,200 deaths that are being looked into.
All political parties in Northern Ireland, the Irish government, and the families of those who perished during that time have all denounced the bill, which will be heard in parliament next week.
The Council of Europe, the foremost rights watchdog in Europe, has voiced “serious concerns” about the proposed bill.
However, organizations that represent British veterans from that era have praised the law, arguing that former troops have faced unfair trials.
For the first time since the conflict’s end in 1998, British soldier David Holden was given a three-year suspended sentence in November 2022 for fatally shooting a civilian in the rear at a checkpoint.
