An investigation into the links between the Official IRA and the Workers Party.
Profile of the carnage over the years caused by joy/riders. Begins with 43rd victim, Debbie McCombs death in west Belfast, and profile of her killer Harry Marley. Also the case of Nial Blaney who killed John McDonald. PSNI's viewpoint, and two former joyriders Mark Hamill and Ned McComb appeal to youths to stop.
It took 30 years to convict child killer Robert Black for the murder of Jennifer Cardy. The Co Antrim child was one of four girls murdered by Black in the UK. Following his recent death in a NI prison, Chris Moore looks back at his life of crime.
Chris Moore reports on the story of a Vietnamese man who says he spent almost half his life as a modern slave in Britain, the Irish Republic and most recently in Northern Ireland.
Noel Thompson presents this specially extended programme, as consultation on legacy proposals enters its final weeks. With interviews from serving chief constable George Hamilton and former chief constable Sir Hugh Orde, as well as studio reaction from victims' representatives and politicians.
Jennifer O'Leary speaks to Máiría Cahill about the Police Ombudsman's report into the PSNI's handling of her abuse allegations.
Stormont is on ice and now a make-or-break Brexit summit in Brussels is looming where the border could scupper a deal. Jim Fitzpatrick asks if 'no deal' could put politics into deep freeze and mean the return of a hard border.
Noel Thompson chairs as a studio audience puts topical questions to a panel of decision makers. Panellists include former Downing Street spokesperson Matthew O'Toole, Labour TD Joan Burton, Guido Fawkes news editor Hugh Bennett, DUP MLA Christopher Stalford and Sinn Fein MP Chris Hazzard.
Will Theresa May survive her Brexit deal? As the politics are played out at Westminster, Jim Fitzpatrick goes on the road to ask what happens next and what it means for Northern Ireland
Datshiane Navanayagam reveals a risky money-making scheme in which the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service has been targeted through one of its own.
Peter Coulter investigates claims that leaders of the Roma community in Belfast have been exploiting their own people, and travels to Romania to see their lavish houses complete with gold-coloured gates.
Spotlight travels to the Indian Ocean to investigate another luxury holiday taken by the North Antrim MP Ian Paisley. Lyndsey Telford reports.
A studio audience discussion. Panellists are Sinn Fein’s Mairtin O Muilleoir, DUP’s Edwin Poots, Alliance leader Naomi Long, historian Diarmaid Ferriter and economist Liam Halligan. Noel Thompson presents.
Following the murder of Lyra McKee in April, Spotlight investigates the New IRA. With reporter Conor Spackman.
Conor Spackman examines the challenges posed to the PSNI by the New IRA and other dissident republicans.
New revelations about how agents of British intelligence infiltrated the Irish Republican Army. By 1979, the British security forces believed the IRA had become so security conscious that they were impossible to penetrate. But reporter Jennifer O’Leary reveals how one weakness in the IRA’s internal security was exploited to unlock many of the group’s secrets. She charts how Britain used informers and combined that advantage in secret intelligence with the use of special forces to take on one of the IRA’s deadliest units – a strategy that culminated with the Loughgall ambush, when the SAS killed eight IRA men attacking a police station. The programme shows that the aftermath of the attack only made the IRA’s informer problem worse.
Episode five traces how unionist anger grew as IRA attacks on the security forces killed members of their community. When Margaret Thatcher signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, giving the Republic of Ireland political influence in the North, the anger spilled over into talk of insurrection. The programme reveals how loyalist groups rearmed and used intelligence leaks from soldiers and police to boost their campaign of killing, including new information about MI5 agents operating inside the largest loyalist group, the Ulster Defence Association.
Revelations from the Northern Ireland conflict. Loyalists killed more people than the IRA in the closing years of the Troubles. Through an insider in one of the most notorious killer gangs, Mandy McAuley discovers that not only was the Ulster Volunteer Force carrying out more attacks, it was also deliberately targeting families of Irish republicans. Revelations about the murders of two young brothers lead to calls for the investigation into the killings to be reopened.
The End Game. How the IRA's war stopped after 25 years of conflict.
This film shows how the critically acclaimed television series Spotlight on the Troubles: A Secret History was made. Reporters, producers – even the bosses – were filmed over two years as they uncovered incredible new stories about the past. How did Jennifer O'Leary persuade a former missionary priest to reveal his role in smuggling money and weapons to the IRA? How did Darragh Macintyre find out the British and American intelligence connections to a long-hidden documentary about a senior IRA man? And how did Mandy McAuley discover that a church charity worker was actually a suspect in a series of murders across Mid Ulster?
As full Brexit comes closer, the cost of your supermarket shop and online purchases may be affected. BBC Northern Ireland’s business and economics editor John Campbell investigates how consumers will have to adjust to the consequences of Northern Ireland’s position as a bridge between the UK and the EU. What will the goods border in the Irish Sea mean for your household budget?
2020 has been a year like no other. Jennifer O’Leary looks back on a dramatic 12 months. As the pandemic remains a challenge to governments across the world, she hears from the Taoiseach Micheál Martin. And, with a panel of commentators, she asks if the virus has pulled relationships at the Stormont Executive together or further apart.
Jim Fitzpatrick & Mark Devenport discuss where Northern Ireland is headed after 100 years
The Prime Minister, Taoiseach and others help former BBC NI political editor Mark Devenport chart his way through Northern Ireland’s century. One hundred years after the partition of Ireland, he speaks with some who suffered during our contentious past and others who will decide our uncertain future. Plus the results of a major opinion poll assessing the views of the public, on both sides of the border, on what lies ahead.
From Bobby Storey’s funeral to protests like Black Lives Matter, the response to Covid-19 posed unexpected questions about the PSNI’s behaviour. As society emerges from lockdown restrictions, Jennifer O’Leary investigates how the pandemic - along with the Irish Sea border - exposed tensions over policing.
Mark Devenport, the former BBC NI political editor and Ireland correspondent, scrutinises the United Kingdom of Charles III. The new king inherits a realm that held together in his mother’s reign, despite being rocked by independence movements, powerful social change and even violent insurrection in Northern Ireland. Can the kingdom survive today’s pressures on the constitution and the crown?
Sean had a history of drug use and mental health problems when doctors decided to detain him in a psychiatric unit for his own good. Hours later, he managed to evade supervision and ultimately take his own life inside the hospital. Alan Haslam speaks to his grieving mother and investigates what lessons have been learned.
In 1970 the army invented a new weapon for Northern Ireland, one intended to save lives and keep peace - the rubber bullet. But after 17 people were killed by that weapon and its successor, the plastic bullet, Stephen Dempster investigates claims that the government knew of their deadly potential. Spotlight speaks to the soldiers who fired them, the families who lost loved ones and those still searching for answers.
The true story of an American trucker who became one of MI5’s most important spies. Just when the Real IRA was bombing Britain and threatening to wreck the Northern Ireland peace process, the group’s boss was spilling his secrets to David Rupert, who passed everything on to the FBI and MI5. In a broadcast exclusive, Rupert tells his extraordinary story to Jennifer O’Leary.
The criminal justice system in Northern Ireland is burdened by long delays in cases getting to court. Murder and rape cases can take five years or longer to conclude. Reporter Stephen Dempster investigates why cases are taking so long, talks to victims who have found themselves in what they call a 'traumatic, nightmare situation', and hears from experts who fear the system is at breaking point, with potential consequences for the rule of law.
NHS waiting lists in Northern Ireland are the worst in the UK, with patients waiting for more than half a million hospital appointments. Lyndsey Telford hears some of their stories, including a four-year-old boy who’s been waiting half his life for surgery on his hips, and a woman who has saved to go private. She asks a panel of some of the UK’s top health experts how we fix this healthcare crisis.
The crisis that took down a chief constable: starting with a massive data leak, followed quickly by a court ruling that sparked a row over political interference in policing. As a result, the Police Service of Northern Ireland wound up without a leader. BBC NI’s crime and justice correspondent Julian O’Neill investigates inside the crisis that rolled over the PSNI in a matter of weeks.
A family’s story of domestic abuse. Mandy McAuley investigates the hidden toll of women who take their own lives after enduring violence in the home. She hears calls for the law to change to hold abusers to account for those deaths, and pleas for the issue to be recognised in Northern Ireland’s suicide-prevention strategy for the first time.
Stakeknife was a super-spy, a secret agent working for both the British and the IRA. He walked a precarious tightrope in an undercover war where exposure meant death. Operation Kenova, the long-running investigation into Stakeknife and the so-called dirty war, which is now coming to a close, brings Peter Taylor back to Northern Ireland. He revisits the chilling IRA interrogation tapes he initially uncovered and talks again to grieving families devastated by the loss of their loved ones to the IRA’s brutal interrogators and killers.
Thirty years after they declared ceasefires, the UVF has moved against the leaders of its east Belfast unit - standing down and replacing them in a move that may signal loyalist groups are moving away from paramilitary activity. There are calls for the appointment of an intermediary to aid that process, but Conor Spackman hears others saying they have seen this before.
An unsolved murder in a ground-breaking gay bar. Darren Bradshaw was a young, gay police officer enjoying a night out when a republican gunman walked into the crowded bar, shot him next to the dance floor and escaped into the night. The killing came at a pivotal time for both the gay scene in Northern Ireland and the peace process. The murder shattered the gay scene as rumours swirled about who knew he was in the bar and who may have betrayed him. Jordan Dunbar hears from the DJs, drag queens and police officers who were there – and who helped the LGBT community rebuild.
A custody battle in the shadow of war. David left home at ten months old and never came back. Spotlight investigates the story of a mother separated from her child by a looming war and her fight for custody with a father defying the UK authorities. Patrick Fee follows the trail of the boy to Beirut.
Get up to date on the issues of the day – join Jim Fitzpatrick for challenging questions and answers in Spotlight Special’s TV debate programme. On the panel: Justice Minister Naomi Long, MPs Gavin Robinson, DUP, Chris Hazzard, Sinn Fein, and Simon Hoare, Conservative. And Fine Gael TD Neale Richmond.