In February 2025, the Independent Reporting Commission – with a remit to monitor progress towards ending paramilitary activity here ‘once and for all’ -- published its Seventh Report. (The IRC mandate dates from the 2015 Fresh Start Agreement and the 2016 Action Plan which also underpins the current Executive Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime.) 

The report explains the Commission’s established “Twin Track approach” to tackling paramilitarism. Track One is “a robust and targeted set of law enforcement measures addressing paramilitarism, coupled with an effective wider criminal justice response”.

Predicated on the repeated assertion that “the PSNI inform us that they cannot arrest their way out of this problem”, the Commission ties Track One to a second track, this one focusing on “the deep-rooted socio-economic conditions which are linked to the continuing existence of paramilitarism today such as deprivation and lack of educational opportunity”. 

It elaborates on the need for this second track:

“We continue to believe that success in the mission of tackling paramilitarism can only be achieved if the social and economic conditions which are linked to the continuing existence of paramilitarism today are comprehensively addressed. Links between poverty, deprivation, disadvantage, lack of opportunity, aspiration, hope, and vulnerability are well established in research and literature, and are echoed in evaluations being carried out by the [ Executive ]  Programme [ on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime ]“ (1.89) 

The Executive Programme on Paramilitarism and Organised Crime (jointly funded by the NI Executive and UK Government at a current rate of £8m / year each) runs up to the end of March 2027, also following this two-track approach. According to the IRC report:

“[the Programme’s aim is] safer communities, resilient to paramilitarism, criminality and coercive control”, and its work includes measures to keep people safe, build up protective factors, and increase community resilience… There are now over 100 projects and initiatives running under the aegis of the Programme, and individually, and particularly collectively and cumulatively, their impact can be seen on a daily basis in communities where the paramilitaries operate.” (1.40)

Detail on specific aspects of the Programme’s Track One on law enforcement can be found at paras. 1.57 – 1.87 of the IRC report. “Track Two - addressing socio-economic issues” is at paras. 1.88 – 1.95:  Track Two projects include youth work support by the Education Authority: Developing Women in the Community; InSync; and Communities in Transition. Detailed project descriptions, funding amounts, intended benefits and other information for projects across both tracks are listed in Section C (3.1 – 3.31) of the IRC Seventh Report.

 In recent years the Commission has begun advocating for a third element “if paramilitarism is to be ended as distinct from being tackled and disrupted”:

“We have developed this suggestion because in our view, to paraphrase from other contexts, “it is not possible to arrest your way out of the problem”. However unpalatable this may be to many; it is our view that the ending of paramilitary organisations has to involve voluntary action by the groups themselves.” (1.29)

Elaborating further on this third component, it says:

“that dimension we have called Group Transition, whereby not just the individual members of paramilitary organisations move on, but the groups themselves transition out of paramilitarism. Furthermore, in order to bring about such Group Transition, we have argued that there needs to be a process of engagement with the groups themselves. We made the case in our previous two reports that the ending of a group is a voluntary act on the part of its members – as the policing authorities on both sides of the border have made clear, and as we have argued in this Report, it is not possible or feasible to arrest one’s way out of paramilitarism.” (1.110) 

The Commission proposes that Group Transition be facilitated by an “Independent Person” (1.30) appointed by the UK and Irish governments.

The Commission’s report notes that “public attention and an informed societal debate are essential if paramilitarism is to be ended” (1.52), and further, refers to what it describes as “little patience among the wider public for the reality that paramilitarism continues in existence today” (1.53).

Interestingly, its publication came in the wake of discussions around several motions ultimately passed at Stormont – “public attention and informed societal debate” indeed – that seem to point to the need for more public scrutiny of and input into the current approach.

 For instance, a 15 October Stormont debate on paramilitarism saw comments such as:

“Just as it was pathetic back in the 80s and 90s to hear representatives who supported economic bombing campaigns complain about unemployment when those groups were tearing apart the economic fabric of towns and cities, so today it is hard to hear certain groups call for much-needed economic development of areas whilst they extract money and well-being from those areas.”

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“We also need to grasp that almost all paramilitary groups have mutated in some way. Very few have gone away, and almost all have turned into something else, although exactly what has occurred varies from place to place. In too many places, we now have a situation where people are community workers by day and thugs by night.”

Further, in October 2024 several MLAs raised concerns about meetings between two sitting Ministers for the DUP party – the Communities and Education Ministers –and members of the Loyalist Communities Council, a group reported to include representatives of loyalist paramilitary organisations and described by the BBC as “a legal entity which represents illegal organisations”. Some drew attention to the fact that during the same period, several law-abiding civil society groups who had wished to engage with these DUP Ministers on matters of policy were denied the opportunity to meet and questioned the rationale for this behaviour.

At the end of the debate, MLAs agreed a joint resolution:

“That this Assembly recognises that the ongoing presence of paramilitary organisations is harming community cohesion, economic development and the overall stability of Northern Ireland; notes with concern the persistent incidents of paramilitary activity, including intimidation, extortion and violence, which continue to undermine the rule of law and the safety of our citizens; further notes with regret the continued attempts by groups linked to paramilitary organisations to influence policy decisions in the absence of a democratic mandate or transparent governance structures; and calls on the First Minister and deputy First Minister to introduce a comprehensive review of the tackling paramilitarism, criminality and organised crime programme to ensure that actions within the final Programme for Government genuinely tackle the scourge of paramilitarism in our society.”

 With regard to the latter point, the finalised Programme for Government 2024-2027 issued in March 2025 includes plans to “refresh” the Tackling Paramilitarism, Criminality and Organised Crime programme (p. 87), but no detail on what form this will take. MLAs continue to table Assembly questions on this issue (most recently, for instance,  AQW 24416/22-27 of 13 March 2025). 

The second relevant Stormont  debate, on 12 November 2024, focused on the racist violence in August and its aftermath. The Commission itself had referred to these events, albeit extremely briefly, in its Seventh Report:

“a further worrying feature of the situation in 2024 was that there was a paramilitary element involved in a number of racist incidents related to immigration, according to the PSNI” (1.33)

Stormont’s 12 November 2024 debate resulted in the following resolution:

“That this Assembly condemns ongoing racist incidents in our community; and calls upon the First Minister and deputy First Minister to urgently carry out a comprehensive review of the racist attacks of July and August 2024, to include what happened, why it happened and who was involved, and to bring forward proposals on how to prevent it happening again.”

During the debate, different MLAs expressed concerns around paramilitary involvement in the violence and the follow-up to it:

“Committee members put questions [to the Department and the police] based on what we had heard from the stakeholders, including evidence of paramilitary involvement in racist attacks, police officers standing idly by while minority-owned businesses were attacked and police advising victims to engage with community representatives who are known to be involved with paramilitary organisations.”

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“Everyone here knows that such incidents are far from spontaneous. They are the products of years of dangerous rhetoric and anti-immigrant sentiment. They are also the product of paramilitary influence, which still looms large in the lives of many of our young people. It was right that politicians from across different parties condemned those attacks during the summer and it is right that we repeat those condemnations today.”

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“We must call out and deal with the fact that there was a level of organisation around the attacks. That organising is conducted by paramilitaries, as the PSNI confirmed in relation to the attacks during the summer. Indeed, an Equality Commission report on racism found that many people were reluctant to report hate crime, due to concerns that it is linked to or endorsed by loyalist paramilitaries.”

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“Let us also be honest about the ways in which that racist violence intersects with paramilitarism. There is a lot of double-talk in this place and in society about how those things intersect. The PSNI and the UN acknowledged that loyalist paramilitaries were involved in facilitating that violence. We are told that they have denied it at an organisational level, but it is pretty clear to anyone who is in a position of authority that loyalist paramilitaries were involved in facilitating those actions. Of course, their representatives still get meetings with Ministers. What message are we sending?”

This, like the other questions raised, highlights the need for an open, clear-eyed look at the existing approach to tackling paramilitarism – the “informed societal debate” that the IRC itself says is essential if paramilitarism is to be ended.