Will Ireland’s police question the ex-IRA boss who says he killed Mountbatten?

Do you remember when, last December, the Irish government took the United Kingdom to court over proposals for dealing with the legacy of the Troubles? They, and many domestic critics in the UK, said that plans to establish a South African-style truth and reconciliation commission – in which individuals could receive an amnesty in exchange for honest testimony – amounted to a get-out-of-jail-free card for people who may have committed terrible crimes. 

Well, nothing quite puts that story in perspective like this week’s report that Michael Hayes, a former IRA commander now living in the Republic of Ireland, has openly boasted about being the mastermind who planned the 1979 assassination of Lord Mountbatten. 

‘Yes, I blew him up. (Tom) McMahon put it on his boat…I planned everything, I am commander in chief,’ Hayes told the Mail on Sunday. ‘I blew up Earl Mountbatten in Sligo but I had a justification…He came to my country and murdered my people and I fought back.