Northern Ireland Affairs Committee — hearing of 24 June 2026: transcript & video

00:04 - 00:42

Speaker 1

Good morning, this is the Northern Ireland Affairs Select Committee session into the Peter May review of the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery. Inquiry, recovery, sorry. So, we have panel one, we have Peter May with us, the independent reviewer of corporate effectiveness and cultural health review of the ICRIR, joining us virtually. So thank you very much Peter for joining us today. Can you provide us with an overview of your review's findings and the issues requiring the most urgent attention?

00:42 - 02:45

Speaker 5

Thank you, Chair, thank you for the invitation today and for your question. Maybe helpful to the committee if I just set one or two things out by way of background for the review. So firstly, I was jointly commissioned by the Northern Ireland Office and the Independent Commission to undertake this review. And I was asked to complete it by the end of February 2026. You'll have seen the terms of reference make it clear that it's not a section 36 review, so it has a more specific remit.

I didn't, for example, look at investigative practice, that would be outside of my skill set in any case. And as you've highlighted, the focus was on corporate effectiveness and culture. The only other point I would make is that this was not a detailed audit. So I did not go into individual cases or issues and seek to reach conclusions on those cases. I heard from a wide range of people from across the organization and I'm confident that I was given all of the information that I asked for during the review and people were honest and open with me in the engagement I had with them and I was very grateful for that.

In terms of the detail of your question, so what my report does is it draws out under a series of chapter headings the key issues. There are, it seems to me, some structural challenges facing the commission, some of which emanate from its founding legislation, and they are not straightforward to address. And I know there is some further legislation currently being developed and is before Parliament. There is areas to address in relation to corporate governance and finance, and I've made a number of recommendations in those areas, but actually those would be some of the areas that I think could be most straightforwardly addressed. And I know some progress has already been made.

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