The DUP’s Jim Allister QC, has today given the Party’s reaction to the publication of the Cory Report.

Jim Allister said, “Today my primary thoughts and concerns are for the families of the thousands of forgotten victims of terrorism in Northern Ireland, for whom there has been no politically driven propaganda campaign, no arrests, no prosecutions and certainly no public enquiries.  They may rightly feel like second class citizens.

It is pitiful to see a Government toady to every demand channelled through Cory, because as a sop to Sinn Fein they, aided by all the pro-Agreement parties, made a unilateral commitment at Weston Park to accept whatever was proposed. 

It is outrageous that the taxpayer is going for years to come to be subjected to a series of Saville-type enquiries, costing further hundreds of millions. The pretence that the Government will limit expenditure is a mere figleaf which will not stand the test of time.  It is a token of just how behoven the Government made itself to Cory that it is prohibited by him from going for the more economical ‘Hutton-style’ inquiries.

As for the Prime Minister’s announcement of a consultation on how closure might be brought to the cases of the forgotten victims, this is mentioned today out of embarrassment over the squandering of vast sums of public money to placate the insatiable demands of the Finnucane/Nelson/Hamill campaigns.  If the Government wants satisfactory closure for the innocent victims of terrorism, then let every case be revisited with the vigour reserved till now for Finnucane and others and let them repeal the obnoxious Good Friday legislation which prevents anyone convicted going to jail”.