Victims can’t keep paying an extra price for the peace we enjoy today.

The legacy proposals and subsequent consultation and debate are really important if victims aren’t going to keep paying an extra price for the peace the rest of us enjoy.

What is the agreed vision for this place?

It is well past time to have workable solutions to the needs of victims.

Let us hope the government responds to the legacy consultation with urgency and clarity; providing a route map with no further blocks.

Let us hope also that the final legislation strikes the appropriate balance with the right priorities.

It also needs to rediscover the importance of acknowledgement.

Acknowledgement has almost been disappeared from the proposals. No longer do statements of acknowledgement feature.

Acknowledgement is an important need for victims. It is only right that those who, whatever the circumstances, altered forever the lives of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, son and daughters, recognise the hurt caused and the lives shattered dramatically and forever.

Acknowledgement needs reintroduced to the legacy process to meaningfully help deliver part of the reconciliation process but also as an end in itself deserving focus and priority.

The best definition of reconciliation so far was developed ten years ago by academics Hamber and Kelly – it identified five strands of reconciliation one of which is acknowledgement and dealing with the legacy of the past.

It is important that acknowledgement is recognised as one strand of reconciliation; an important strand but one amongst other strands.

There is a wider need for reconciliation serviced at many levels within government but especially delivered by courageous leaders within communities.

Reconciliation, like the peace process, is a 50-year plus project.

The five years proposed under the proposals for the implementation and reconciliation group (which should be acknowledgement) is nowhere near enough.

Unfortunately victims’ issues have been politicised for years and decades.

This issue needs de-politicised. Oversight by a group appointed by local political parties and the two governments will simply further politicise assessment of what has been done and what further is important to do.

The political oversight should be dropped in favour of civil society input, recruited through a public appointment process, accountable to democratic institutions but accountable ultimately to victims and the public too.

It is time victims’ needs were met fairly and clearly, with ambition.

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