The NCRR: A Silver-Lining for a National Remembrance VIII? - For those affected, alive or dead, context, truth and rights is everything!
I return to the latest in my series about Ireland’s proposed National Centre for Research & Remembrance or the NCRR. I’ve waited for a longer period than normal between episodes in this series of podcasts, as I have been waiting for a response to my letters from the Minister; I will update you on my progress. But I shall also take the opportunity in this episode to examine the issue of context within the story-telling for Ireland’s historical Institutions; I will demonstrate why it is absolutely central to the objective of giving voice to Ireland’s victims, alive or dead, providing as it does, a solid foundation for truth-telling. As the strapline to my article states: For those affected, alive or dead, context, truth and rights is everything!
But before I start to speak about context, I just thought I’d bring you up-to-date in my desire to bring the voices of those who died before a State Apology was given to Ireland’s victims, and how they need to also have a seat around the table of the all-important Steering Group of the NCRR.
Why? Because whilst all the concerns of the victims, survivors and their families are equally important in the creation of the NCRR, there needs to be a voice to help deliver on the Irish government’s stated aim of ‘non-recurrence’ or ‘never again’ (an all-important International Human Rights Principle) – if you ignore this principle, you ignore the many thousands of stories of the ‘invisible dead’.
I have challenged the absence of the important voices of the ‘invisible dead’, and since the beginning of 2026, I have written to Minister Foley, seeking her opinion and help to rectify this wrong.
In writing to the Minister, I have done so respectfully, making my arguments in the most constructive way possible; I have even offered to meet the Minister in person to discuss this important issue.
Apart from an initial chased acknowledgement, each of my subsequent letters have not received an acknowledgement, that is until now.
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