In different interviews he seemed schizophrenic. On the Today programme, confronted with the outrage of a victim’s relative on the day  a coroner decides whether to order new inquests, he said it was “an accident.. because the phones didn’t work.. .. horrible .. but part of a just war”. Yesterday he wrote off the IRA campaign as “completely futile…”

“A new trial is ruled out for lack of evidence unless the guilty men turned up at a UK police station and confessed but that isn’t going to happen..because the extradition rules ( of the 1970s) would apply today.”.

Indeed. One person’s legalistic evasion is another’s principle of justice.  Inquests are a option which have been deferred for grotesquely long periods in so many cases because – or under the pretence – that they may be superseded by a trial, But would anything less than naming names satisfy victims and survivors?  This is the question for any police reinvestigation of the Kingsmills massacre or any of the outstanding 50 or so  major legacy inquests in NI itself.  Expectations may be raised  that can’t be satisfied. That perhaps is  not enough reason for not trying.

But there are deep doubts that many inquests will yield major results. So  has the time come to change course and require the security services on both sides of the border and the Irish sea  to disclose what they know? Can this be done without identifying the killers, whose identities are protected  by natural justice without a trial?

But the other issue is the obvious foot dragging by the two states. The Northern Ireland senior judiciary has assumed control over legacy inquests and does not hide its impatience with the Ministry  of Defence and the Northern Ireland Executive.

It hardly helps if it isn’t clear which administration is responsible for funding. The whole legacy issue is a terrible muddle.

Irish foreign minister Charlie Flanagan is demanding that the British government open the files on the Dublin and Monaghan bombs for an international inquiry. But the south is still a bolthole for many killers. To what extent did the old extradition rules allow hundreds to get away with it? How for their part can the Republic make amends?  Despite the good faith shown in inquiries like the Smithwick tribunal, resentment still prevails over the erratic security cooperation during the Troubles.

Justice may be unobtainable but greater disclosure all round is a good second best. To achieve it would require an end to legacy prosecutions and an honest debate about “national security”

Why go through years of rigmarole  which  is likely  to end in worse  frustration, when the Gordian knot of disclosure could be so much more easily cut ? How long  do we have to pursue the search for  justice before we admit it is unobtainable and opt for more disclosure? Until that happens the two governments will hide behind legal process in refusing  release of security files.

Although the British and Irish governments seem joined at the hip in so many ways, they have not fully confronted their respective obligations on disclosure for dealing with the past. It’s disingenuous of them to claim that they  are powerless to act until the local parties agree on the legacy agenda. Until they do so themselves, how can they expect the same from Stormont?