Hi °C | Lo °C Political pressure is mounting on the new Secretary of State Owen Paterson to announce a date for publication of the Saville Inquiry.
Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness led the calls after his first conversations with Mr Paterson and new Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.
Mr McGuinness raised the plight of the families of those killed on Bloody Sunday following over a year of successive delays in the publication.
“There should be no delay whatsoever,” he said.
“The families have waited now for almost 40 years and it has been an agonising wait for them.”
Mr Paterson said yesterday that he will publish “as soon as possible”.
He added, however, that he was not yet in a position to set an actual date for the publication.
Speaking as he prepared to make his first official visit to Northern Ireland, Mr Paterson also said that he wanted the report to be published in “as measured and as sensible and as civilised a manner as possible”.
The mammoth report will contain the findings of Lord Saville of Newdigate’s decade-long Inquiry into the fatal shooting of 14 men by paratroopers in the Bogside on January 30, 1972 during a civil rights march.
Foyle MP Mark Durkan said the publication of the report must be Mr Paterson’s first priority.
He said: “Publishing the Saville Report could be his first major Parliamentary outing as Secretary of State.
“I believe that he now has some appreciation that how the report is published and received will be a test of him, the new government, his own party and parliament.”
Mr Durkan said previous meetings between Mr Paterson and the relatives of those killed on Bloody Sunday had left them deeply worried and anxious.
“The people of Derry will want to be assured that he will undertake publication with urgency and sensitivity,” Mr Durkan said.
