Life has a habit of sending Peter Sheridan down less travelled roads.  

In 1975, as a teenager in Fermanagh during his final days at Saint Michael’s College, Enniskillen, he applied to join the Gardai and the RUC cadet school. He received no reply from the south. When the training offer came from the RUC, he grappled with the sobering knowledge that Catholics like him made up five per cent of the force and were a favourite target of republican paramilitaries.  

As his family debated his career options, he was struck by the pragmatism of his grandmother who said, “well, if he’s meant to be shot, he’ll never be drowned”.  

Looking back on it, he says: “Strangely, it made me think, maybe it’s meant to be and, when I look back, she was right.”

Thirty-two years later, as Assistant Chief Constable, Sheridan was the highest-ranking Catholic in the PSNI. He was responsible for the Crime Operations Department, which involved serious and organised crime investigations, including terrorist activities. He had access to many sensitive intelligence files so he knew how, on at least three occasions, the IRA had considered trying to kill him.    

In 2001 when the RUC became the PSNI, he embraced the policing reforms, drafted by the eight-member Commission chaired by Chris Patten.

In May 2007 he watched former IRA members Alex Maskey and Martina Anderson take Sinn Féin seats on Northern Ireland’s Policing Board after the party made an Ard Fheis decision to support justice and policing. That same month he observed an unlikely DUP-Sinn Féin pairing enter power-sharing at Stormont and noted the optimism that followed.  

One day he visited journalist Nell McCafferty and her mother and their home in Derry’s Bogside. He brought his copy of Nell’s book with him to have her sign it. She persuaded him to fix a plug in the house and gave him soup made by her neighbour, Peggy McGuinness. The following week he crossed paths with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness at a meeting in Downing Street. He couldn’t resist telling him “your mother, Peggy, makes lovely soup”.

In 2008, with more than three decades of service clocked up, Sheridan decided it was an appropriate time to move on. There was a retirement package on offer. But he wasn’t ready to finish working.

He applied for a job, a civilian post, as Assistant Commissioner in the Gardai. For a second time, he didn’t receive a reply.

Peace and reconciliation projects promoted

Once more he took a less well-travelled road.  He became Chief Executive of the charity organisation, Co-operation Ireland and spent the next 15 years promoting its peace and reconciliation projects.  

Last month its chairman, Christopher Moran, confirmed he would be stepping down. Another board member, a former British Ambassador to Ireland, Sir Julian King, is the replacement. For 63-year-old Peter Sheridan, it seemed like circumstances were laying out the final phase of his working life. The new chair of Co-operation Ireland would need time to settle into the role and a safe pair of CEO hands to guide him.  Once the bedding-in was done, Sheridan could begin planning his own retirement and replacement.

But, as he explains it, “something kept tapping on my shoulder”.  After 47 working years, he still was not ready to retire. On this occasion, he would opt to travelling down a road never before taken.  

He is joining 72-year-old Sir Declan Morgan, Northern Ireland’s former Lord Chief Justice, in Northern Ireland’s Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR).

The brief of their organisation, established by the British government, has been criticised by all five main political parties in Northern Ireland, by the Irish government, by Britain’s main opposition party Labour, and by victims’ organisations.  

The Conservative party needed its large majority to drive the founding legislation through Westminster, despite significant opposition in the House of Lords.   

But Sheridan and Morgan, two Catholics, one from Fermanagh, one from Derry, have spurned the option of calm, comfortable retirement years.  They both see their new challenge as a duty call that could not be refused.

Bertie Ahern and looking around corners

The most common accusation about the British government’s Legacy Bill is that it will effectively close access to justice for victims and their families.

It will replace current methods of criminal and civil investigations, halting Troubles-related inquests and court actions. It will replace them with inquiries carried out by the new Morgan/Sheridan-led ICRIR organisation, which has the power to offer a conditional amnesty to those accused of crimes, provided they cooperate fully.

The new amnesty provisions apply to all former members of the security forces as well as ex-paramilitaries. Some see it as the British government ending the possibility of criminal prosecutions against members of its intelligence services as well as the British Army and the RUC. They accuse an influential faction within the Conservative party of ‘looking after their own’ at the expense of justice.

Life, including a hefty share of setbacks, some self-inflicted, has taught Bertie Ahern the importance of being able to look around corners and see the potential landmines ahead.

The Taoiseach Ahern/British prime minister Blair relationship was a crucial ingredient of the 1998 Belfast/Good Friday Agreement.  

Fifteen years on from his resignation as Taoiseach in the wake of the Mahon Tribunal revelations, Ahern retains unwavering interest in north-south relations. He still has access to all the key players.

Last month, he was asked about the British government’s legacy bill and the Commission that Peter Sheridan and Declan Morgan are about to champion. He said he found it extraordinary that London is pursuing the bill, despite the fact that it is opposed by virtually everyone in Northern Ireland.

He told of his worries that the policy would damage British-Irish relations and could lead to the Irish government taking legal action against the British government.

The Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has said the Attorney General is preparing advice on whether a case could be taken to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg “essentially saying this bill, act is not compliant with the European Convention on Human Rights, of which the United Kingdom is a signatory”.

“The risk,” said Bertie, “is that it leads to a lot of bad blood. It will go into the life of the new government and Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, has said that if he is elected he will drop the bill or repeal it.”

Bertie said that in his view the legacy bill is “totally unnecessary” and “it is rubbing everybody wrong”.

He made those remarks on Sunday, September 10 when attending the 100^th Liam Lynch commemoration in Kilcrumper graveyard, near Fermoy Co Cork. Lynch was the IRA’s chief of staff during the Civil War. He was mortally wounded by Free State forces when attempting to evade them in South Tipperary in 1923.

In many ways, by delivering the oration at the Republican Plot last month, Bertie Ahern was going back to his roots. Like Liam Lynch, Ahern’s Cork-bon father, Con, took the anti-treaty side in the Civil War and buried his gun rather than hand it in when the conflict ended.

In May 2014 the historian John Dorney wrote an article titled “ What To Do About The Past” for his website “The Irish Story.”

Recalling the Civil War, he wrote: “Terrible things had been done on both sides. Republicans had undertaken a determined and sometimes deadly arson campaign against the homes of Free State supporters as well as assassinating a number of pro-Treaty civilian supporters. Free State forces had judicially executed some 80 republicans and summarily executed one hundred more while prisoners or disarmed. The Free State government often denied it had been in a war, as opposed to a situation of anarchy and armed crime, at all. 

“The Civil War, moreover never properly ended. The anti-Treaty IRA dumped arms and went home but never surrendered or handed over their weapons.

“And yet in August 1923, with an Act of Indemnity for its own forces, and in late 1924, with an act of General Amnesty for all prisoners, the Free State government enacted an amnesty for all acts committed in the Civil War.

“There would in future be no prosecutions, nor any further official retribution for the horrors of 1922-23. This was in fact done as much to protect the government, many of whose actions had in fact been illegal, as to rehabilitate the anti-Treaty guerrillas but the fact remained that once the Civil War was over, it stayed over.”

Towards the end of his piece, John Dorney, wrote  “I have tried to point out in this article that Irish history is full of internal insurgencies and wars. After virtually all of them, amnesties were eventually declared. 

“Whether one likes it or not, the same rules cannot apply to peacetime as to periods of armed conflict, when large elements of the citizenry confront each other. As a matter of practicality, a line must be drawn under the conflict once it is over. It can also be argued whether the veil of silence that for so long hung over the darker actions of the revolutionary years was a positive thing. 

“Bear in mind that while the victims of the Northern Troubles have been painstakingly counted and named, we have only now got a rough idea of even how many died in Ireland between 1916 and 1923. It cannot have been healthy for southern Irish society that the widespread killing of informers in 1919-21 or the equally widespread torture and abuse of prisoners of the Free State was never openly confronted in any way.

“This silence surely contributed to other silences in independent Ireland, such as that around the abuse of children in Church and state institutions or the remarkable secrecy of Irish cabinets until the present day.

“In an ideal world, Northern Ireland would declare an amnesty from legal consequences for acts of political violence committed from 1969 to 1998 but would also force those on all sides, not only one, who committed them to come clean and take responsibility for what they did.”

Elements in the deals that ended the Troubles are controversial

Stormont remains closed as the DUP continues to boycott power-sharing because of its misgivings over the British government’s post-Brexit deal with the European Union. Despite the political stalemate, the cessation of paramilitary violence brought about by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement holds firm. 

The enormity of that achievement, the fact that the bombings and killings have stopped, is put in context by the recent life-taking in Israel and Gaza  

But the negotiations that brought an end to The Troubles had elements that remain controversial, 25 years on.

As part of the peace process

• Paramilitaries convicted of crimes including murder were released from jail on licence;
• Huge caches of arms were decommissioned without forensic examination
• Information about individuals abducted, killed and secretly buried by paramilitaries was sought on the basis that it could never be used in criminal investigations; and
• Prosecutions were pursued against paramilitaries accused of crimes including murder before the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 on the understanding that, if convicted, they would serve a maximum prison sentence of two years.   

Referendums held on both sides of the border gave the Good Friday Agreement democratic legitimacy.  The provisions included its co-guarantors, the British and Irish governments, committing to the early release of members of paramilitary organisations serving prison sentences for serious crimes, including murder.

By October 1998, 167 prisoners were out on licence. By December 1999 the total had increased to 308.  By the summer of 2000, the number had reached 2,000. All were set free on the understanding that if they were found to have resumed paramilitary activities, they would be imprisoned again. The vast majority of them have not come before the courts since their release.

The Good Friday Agreement committed the parties to “use any influence they may have” to bring about the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms, within two years of the referendums approving the agreement. 

A retired Canadian general, John De Chastelain, was appointed to lead the group overseeing the decommissioning process.

Loyalist paramilitary organisations eventually carried out a number of supervised weapons decommissioning exercises. But most focus fell on the IRA. Based on its electoral success and mandate, the political wing of republicanism, Sinn Féin, was demanding a place in government.

However, the DUP kept insisting there would be no power-sharing with republicans until the weapons issue was addressed. After delays and a number of unconvincing decommissioning exercises, in September 2005, seven years after the Good Friday Agreement, De Chastelain confirmed that significant amounts of IRA weapons and explosives were put beyond use.  

In all the episodes of decommissioning, paramilitary organisations cooperated on the understanding that there would be no forensic examination of weapons, effectively ruling out any possibility of connecting them to past crimes.

“I recognised it was my husband from the clothing he was wearing”, June Proctor told the court.

An Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains, was set up by the British and Irish governments in April 1999.  Its role was to help with the recovery of 17 British and Irish people, abducted, killed and buried by paramilitary organisations during The Troubles. The victims were known as “The Disappeared.”

The Commission guaranteed that any information received would be used solely for the purposes of locating victims’ remains and would be inadmissible in criminal proceedings. Forensic testing could not be carried out on human remains or other items recovered.

The 17 victims went missing between 1972 and 1985. The remains of four of them have yet to be found – Joe Lynskey, abducted in Sept 1972; Seamus Maguire missing since 1973/74; Columba McVeigh, taken by the IRA in November 1975 and British Army officer, Captain Robert Nairac, abducted in May 1977.

The former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, was the First Commissioner appointed by the British government, to oversee the work. A former Fianna Fail Minister and Cavan-Monaghan TD, John Wilson was the first Commissioner appointed by Dublin.

He was succeeded by Frank Murray, a former Secretary to the government, who served in the role until his sudden death in 2018. The two current Commissioners are former Northern Ireland civil servant, Rosalie Flanagan, and former Secretary General in the Department of Justice, Tim Dalton.

The IRA provided a representative to liaise with the Commissioners and the investigators, supervising the search activities, Geoff Knupfer and Jon Hill. The INLA provided information that led to the recovery of the remains of Newry-born Seamus Ruddy in woods near the city of Rouen in Northern France in 2017.  

In April 2023, the latest of several unsuccessful searches for the remains of Columba McVeigh took place at Braggan Bog, in Co Monaghan, close to the border.  

The IRA’s abduction of Jean McConville, a Belfast mother of ten, in December 1972, was the crime that became an international news story. It features in the acclaimed book, ‘Say Nothing’, written by US journalist Patrick Radden Keefe. Her remains were found, not as the result of an organised search by Commission personnel, but by a member of the public, walking his dog on a beach in Co Louth in October 2002.

In 2014, the former Sinn Féin President, Gerry Adams, made himself available to the PSNI in Antrim for questioning in relation to the death of Jean McConville.  He was released without charge.

Two years in jail for a cruel murder. Just part of the Good Friday Agreement

Since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, very few of the unsolved Troubles-related murders have resulted in criminal trials. One exception saw the conviction of Seamus Kearney from Swatragh in Co Derry in 2013 for the murder of a 25-year-old RUC reservist, John Procter, in 1981.

Proctor was shot dead in the car park of the Mid Ulster Hospital at Magherafelt in Co Derry. Minutes before, he had kissed goodbye to his wife, June, and their newborn baby, Johnny junior in the hospital’s maternity ward. 

Earlier that day Constable Proctor had helped to carry the coffin of a neighbour, 20-year-old UDR member, Alan Clarke, who was shot dead on a street in Maghera the previous weekend.

During Kearney’s trial, June Proctor recalled her final moments with her husband.

“Johnny was in his usual good form,” she told the court. As they parted, she said, “God bless. I love you. Watch yourself.”  

She was in the ward when she heard the sound of the shooting. Several bullets were fired. She ran to the nurses’ room which overlooked the car park. She looked out the window to see an ambulance parked at the back of her husband’s car. As she watched, the figure of a man was lifted into the back of the ambulance.

“I recognised it was my husband from the clothing he was wearing”, she told the court.

Two cigarette butts were recovered from the crime scene, together with over a dozen spent cartridge cases from an Armalite AR15 assault rifle. The weapon was also used in a murder bid on UDR soldiers the following year. Seamus Martin Kearney was convicted in relation to that latter crime in 1984.

Forensic techniques not available in 1981, at the time of the hospital car park shooting, were used 32 years later. DNA evidence gathered from one of the cigarette butts safeguarded as evidence from the shooting, was used to connect Kearney to the killing.

Seamus Kearney was 22 at the time of Johnny Proctor’s murder. More than three decades later, he received a minimum 20-year prison sentence for his role in the crime. But because of the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, he would serve a maximum of two years in jail.

As he began to seek day-trip release periods, June Proctor challenged those applications. They were living less than a mile from each other.

“Those who have information are the ones who will decide what the imperfect will be.”

Peter Sheridan

Kearney sought a 48-hour release to celebrate St Patrick’s Day and to see the GAA club he supports, Slaughtneil, take part in an All-Ireland final. He applied for weekend release to spend Saint Valentine’s Day with his partner.

After he was finally let out in November 2015, Jean Proctor complained that she had not been given prior notice of the release.

In September 2021, the 40^th anniversary of her husband’s murder, six years after the release of Seamus Kearney, Jean Proctor gave an interview to the Belfast News Letter.

She was asked about the controversial Legacy Bill of the British government. She said: “It’s very unfair that this amnesty is going to come in, but as our government has it laid out, if we take everybody to court, the most they’re going to get is two years anyway.”

Of Seamus Kearney, she said: “He didn’t even do two years, he got out at weekends. The only joy is we convicted him of the murder and we got a sentence.  We didn’t get the life sentence that he gave us. It’s like you’ve got a conviction which is great, then they take it away from you when they only get two years. Two years out of people’s lives isn’t a very long time”.

Plan for £12,000 ‘Blood Money’ scuppers legacy plan

In 2010, after several months of work, a group chaired by Robin Eames and Denis Bradley produced their proposals on how to deal with the legacy issues of Northern Ireland’s Troubles.

Eames was a former Church of Ireland primate, known for his cross-community work. His close friends included the retired Catholic bishop of Derry, Edward Daly, the priest with the blood-stained handkerchief on Bloody Sunday.  

Denis Bradley put himself forward as vice-chairman of Northern Ireland’s first Policing Board in 2001. He would later suffer a serious assault when he was attacked with a cricket bat by a dissident republican as he watched a football match with his son in a Derry bar.  

Their most controversial proposal was for a £12,000 payment to the relatives of the 3,700 people killed during the Troubles, even if the fatalities were involved in paramilitary shootings and bombings.

They made other recommendations too, including the creation of an Independent Legacy Commission, costing £160 million to deal with issues such as reconciliation, justice, and information recovery and the formation of a Reconciliation Forum.

But it was the idea of the £12,000 ‘blood money’ that scuppered the entire plan. At a crowded news conference in a Belfast hotel where the recommendations were made public, raw anger was the response of some of the victims’ groups.

The Eames-Bradley proposals were one of several failed Legacy initiatives since the Good Friday Agreement.  In December 2014, the negotiations that produced what became known as The Stormont House Agreement, included plans to establish an independent Historical Investigations Unit and an Oral History Archive. Those proposals also failed to satisfy the many complex layers of loss and grievance.

The shadow of the gunman comes to talk         

Next month Peter Sheridan and his wife will use his time in between jobs to visit their daughter and her young family in Australia. Then, in December, he will commit to what may prove to be an impossible challenge.

He traces his decision to an incident that occurred six years ago. It features in Aoife Moore’s recently published book “The Long Game: Inside Sinn Féin”.  

In the days before Christmas 2017, Sheridan was surprised when a former senior IRA man turned up at his office, close to Sandy Row in Belfast, with an extraordinary request. He wanted Sheridan to use his contacts to help him find the widow of an RUC man that he had murdered more than forty years before.

Eventually, Sheridan managed to track her down and get her agreement about the meeting. The woman didn’t want her family to know about it. At the request of the pair, he sat in for some of the discussions and when they asked him to leave the room, he did so.

When I spoke to him in recent days, he talked about elements of that meeting that have stayed with him. “The woman asked questions that bowled me over,” he said. “She asked simple questions like ‘were youse looking through our window, were youse following the kids to the swimming pool? “

“These were obviously questions that had been in her mind for forty years and he was able to answer all of those questions. I know she got a lot of healing out of it, as he did and he is still in touch with her. The two of them hugged at the end of the meeting.

“That won’t suit everybody and not every victim will want to meet the perpetrator. But a lot of victims might like to know ‘why my husband, daughter, wife, why were they picked?” 

It may well be that rulings in the British courts or the European Court of Human Rights will derail the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery before it has an opportunity to begin its work.

If it proceeds to recruit the 300 or more staff it has the funding to hire, the Commission could be on course for failure, as happened with all previous initiatives. But even their doubters acknowledge that Morgan and Sheridan have a history of taking jobs where they put their lives and safety and risk. This is not about money or status.

Based on their past, it would be no surprise if early into their new roles, they tested the bona fides of the British government that appointed them by seeking access to sensitive state files. If they meet with obfuscation or a lack of cooperation, they are unlikely to stay quiet about it.  

Sheridan also hopes that, like the republican who came to him without the permission of the IRA, there will be others, paramilitaries, and former police officers included, who want to make peace with their past.

“There is no perfect solution,” he says. “We are not going to prosecute our way out of this. We are not going to do justices to all injustices on all sides in this but I do think we can make some parts of it better for some people.

“We may well fail but if we don’t try, we are leaving this for another generation. 

“Those who have information are the ones who will decide what the imperfect will be.”