Editorial: Kingsmill is the latest legacy outcome to show why we need more scrutiny on the Irish role in the Troubles

Amidst the many bad things that are happening on legacy, it is important to note some good things that have come out of the Kingsmill inquest.

​It found unequivocally that it was an IRA massacre, and that it was a nakedly sectarian one.

It found that republicans and their political representatives, in other words Sinn Fein, were not of much help to the hearings.

It implied that Republic of Ireland assistance was not of much help either.

There are very many problems that remain unresolved with regard to the Kingsmill inquest, such as the fact that many of the relatives are unhappy that the suspects were not named.

There is also the fact that the investigation into Kingsmill, being a purely IRA bloodbath, has actually flagged up how little scrutiny there has been of the many IRA massacres. Or of the fact that republican terrorists murdered far more people than any other group or set of groups during the Troubles.

It can hardly be said often enough that this investigative imbalance is one of the great scandals of our age, and an occasional finding in favour of the security forces for killing IRA terrorists as they went out to kill, for example last week’s finding of justified force into the 1991 SAS killings as Coagh, does not even come close to redressing the imbalance.

But there is one immediate point to be made with regard to Kingsmill, a point that the Ulster Unionist leader Doug Beattie has raised in a letter to the secretary of state: Irish failure to be transparent with that inquest.

Ireland is suing the UK on legacy, yet it is largely getting away with its hypocrisy. Barely any light has been shone on the way in which the Republic was used as a base for IRA attacks. The Irish authorities would then not extradite those IRA killers. This must get scrutiny.