Statement from TUV vice-chair Keith Harbinson:

“When the Commission was unveiled TUV leader Jim Allister said:

“The spin over the appointment of 4 Commissioners, pretending it is a gain for victims, is designed to divert attention from the fact that OFMDFM was unable to agree. The danger is that the same dysfunctionalism will afflict the working of the new Commission, with them able to act only on consensus. The lowest common denominator will inform decisions, rather than the real needs of victims. Also, money that ought to have gone directly to victims will be wasted on a bloated administration, which will be four times more expensive that it need have been….

“One of the Commissioners, Ms McBride, is someone in whom innocent victims of the IRA can have no confidence, given her antecedents and alignment with republicanism.”

“Time has proved our analysis to be correct and now even the members of the commission concede as much. Mike Nesbitt’s admission before the Committee for the Office of the First Minister and deputy First Minister yesterday that the Victims’ Commission “are a year up-and-running and they are not delivering” was a acknowledgment that the Paisley/McGuinness Commission is not fit for purpose.

“Innocent victims could never support a Commission which included among its members one who spoke about IRA terrorists as “volunteers” who died on “active service”. Its existence far from helping to heal the wounds of the past helped to open them up.

“Even Nationalists like Dolores Kelly can see that victims have “no confidence in the Commission”.

“When a member of a body admits that it has failed to deliver it is time for that body to go.

“One of the greatest scandals of devolution has been its treatment of innocent victims of terrorism. It has resulted in a self-confessed IRA commander holding sway in the office charged with looking after the interests of the victims his wicked movement created and has made no progress in amending the obnoxious definition of victim which puts the killer in the same bracket as those he killed.”