Letter: Unequal application of the law cannot be tolerated in a democracy

The PPS, in their statement, accepted it was a breach of the law, but then engaged in intellectual backflips to conjure up a justification for determining that the ‘public interest’ was not served by prosecuting those who had breached it.

Surely the public interest is best served by upholding the law.

Indeed, the PPS applied the same law quite differently to unionists/loyalists when many who peacefully walked in anti-protocol parades were prosecuted for doing so.

In those cases, there was no convoluted ‘public interest’ determination that prosecutions should not follow.

It is even more worrying when the PPS, in its statement, appears to say the ‘public interest tests’ they applied in this case won’t be policy for other cases. Why not?

Of course, the facts of each case must be considered on their merits, but how can it be that the test applied to those facts differs in this case than others in regard to precisely the same offence?

If a Loyal Order parade is only a small number of persons, walking peacefully and without disruption a short distance, doing so in their own community without causing any disruption, will the PPS equally nullify the clear and express terms of relevant parading statute to ensure there is no prosecution?

I don’t imagine they would, or will. The unequal application of the law cannot be tolerated in a democracy.

The message sent by yesterday’s PPS decision is that it is one rule for nationalists, and another for unionists/loyalists.

This follows on from the same unequal application of the law in relation to the Storey funeral. It seems the PPS will always find a way out of enforcing the law against nationalists in the same way they do against unionists/loyalists.

Concerns around a two-tier justice system are very real, and there is an onus on the PPS to publicly explain why one community is being treated differently than another in the application of the law.

Everyone should be equal under the law, and equally subject to the law. This case has starkly demonstrated that that is currently not so.

Baroness Kate Hoey