Kenneth Bloomfield

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Sir Kenneth Bloomfield (born April 15, 1931) is a former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service who was later a member of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains and for a time Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner.

Sir Kenneth Bloomfield was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution (of which he is now a governor) and St Peter's College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. He was secretary to the power-sharing Executive in 1974, permanent secretary of the Department of the Environment and of Economic Development. He was appointed Head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service on 1 December 1984. In that capacity he was the most senior advisor to successive Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland and other Ministers on a wide range of issues.

He retired from his position in April 1991. Sir Kenneth received a Knighthood in the 1987 Birthday Honours List. In December 1997 he was asked by the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, to become the Northern Ireland Victims Commissioner for a fixed term. His role was to produce a report on the way forward for Victims issues in Northern Ireland. His report entitled We Will Remember Them was published in April 1998. From 1991 to 1999 he served as the BBC’s National Governor for Northern Ireland. He was also Chairman of the Northern Ireland Legal Services Commission until 2004.

He was targeted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in a bomb attack on his County Down home in 1988.[1]

[edit] Works

  • A Tragedy of Errors (2007)
  • We will remember them (1998) Full text from CAIN
  • Stormont in Crisis, a memoir (1994)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Noel McAdam. "Unity 'not unthinkable'", Belfast Telegraph, 2007-08-24, p. 2. 
     2. Irish Times article, August 24th, 2007: "Irish unity not unthinkable 'in principle' says Bloomfield". 

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2007/0824/1187332466086.html