The cost of dealing with Northern Ireland’s troubled past is set to be considerably more than £2 billion, a UK think tank has estimated.
The Policy Exchange has put the cost of inquiries, court cases, inquests and compensation payouts so far at between £840 million and £1.4 billion.
They also estimated a further £1.3 billion will be incurred in the future, leading to a total cost in connection with the Troubles as “between £2.2 billion and £2.7 billion”.
They warned the costs could be “considerably higher” if the current Labour government “continues to embrace a maximalist approach to legalism”.
It comes after the same think tank criticised the Government for repealing parts of the previous administration’s Legacy Act, and said that action will remove a block on former Troubles internees, including former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, seeking compensation.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer responded to that report last month saying he is looking at “every conceivable way” to stop the former Troubles internees from seeking compensation.
A public inquiry is currently hearing whether the security forces could have prevented the Real IRA bomb attack Omagh in 1998, while another inquiry, which had been previously committed to, is set to get under way into the killing of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane.
In a foreword to the Policy Exchange paper, former Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt claimed the approach of the Government to the legacy of Northern Ireland’s past “appears at times to be being dictated by a maximalist approach to legalism, without regard to the underlying benefits or costs”.
He claimed this approach is “wrong, not least when short-term penny pinching has lost the UK a £450 million vaccine manufacturing plant investment from AstraZeneca”.
“When every line of additional departmental spending must run the Treasury gauntlet, is it right that there should be no such checks on the total cost of inquiries whether concerning Northern Ireland or indeed anywhere else?” he said.
“If the additional sums being committed by this Government to legacy matters were genuinely helping to bring about peace and reconciliation, the country would pay them cheerfully.
“But there is scant evidence that this is the case; indeed, scant evidence that such factors are even being considered. Rather, the approach to legacy appears at times to be being dictated by a maximalist approach to legalism, without regard to the underlying benefits or costs.”
Meanwhile in an introduction to the paper, economist Policy Exchange and senior fellow Roger Bootle said the Government is “taking a series of decisions that stand to commence lengthy inquiries and to increase its liability to civil suits, all with little regard to costs”.
“Given our fiscal circumstances, an open-ended series of uncapped investigations and legal inquiries is something that we can ill-afford to indulge in,” he said.
The Policy Exchange said the costs they calculated include funding the public inquiry into Bloody Sunday, legal costs, the Victims’ Payment Scheme as well as ongoing costs in organisations including the Northern Ireland Office and the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
