1,000 payments so far from NIO to Troubles victims and survivors

Noel McAdam, Sunday Life, February 2nd, 2025

Payments under a Troubles-linked compensation scheme for victims have reached the 1,000 mark.

But applications under the disablement payment scheme are sitting at around 10,000, the Assembly has heard.

The scheme is now open for applications until August of 2026 after the Government last August granted a two-year extension following pressure from campaigners and politicians.

DUP MLA Phillip Brett said the payouts showed recognition and respect for innocent victims, while perpetrators would continue to be excluded.

The way in which victims of the Troubles had been and continue to be treated, the North Belfast Assemblyman added, is “nothing short of an absolute disgrace”.

In the week the inquiry into the 1998 Omagh bombing opened, he went on: “The perpetrators continue to try to justify their actions, while their supporters continue to attempt to rewrite the past.

“I am absolutely delighted to say that, to date, 10,000 innocent victims the length and breadth of the province have applied to the scheme.

“Over 1,000 applications have been approved, with over £76million having been awarded to people.

“The awarding of those payments will never replace a missing family member at the table, and it will never take away the trauma that they suffered because of terrorism, but it rightly recognises the fact that this place will always respect innocent victims.”

Launched in 2019, the scheme — which is also known as the victims pension — provides payments of between £2,000 and £10,000 depending on the level of the applicant's disability.

Announcing the extension, Secretary of State Hilary Benn said: “Approximately 40,000 people were injured during the Troubles, and it is essential that we recognise the great hurt that was caused during this dark period in our history.”

Baroness Foster calls for laws to prevent Sinn Fein's 'glorification' of terrorism

By David Thompson, NEWS LETTER, February 1st, 2025

Former First Minister Arlene Foster has proposed legislation meaning people in authority could be prosecuted for glorifying terrorism – and slammed republicans’ “strategy to lionise” the IRA and put “them and their actions on a pedestal”.

Baroness Foster says First Minister Michelle O’Neill’s attendance at events commemorating the IRA “sends a very clear message to young republicans that what these young men did was honourable”.

The former DUP leader was herself twice a victim of IRA terrorism as a child. At eight years old she witnessed the aftermath of an attempt by the IRA to murder her late father John, a farmer and reserve police officer.

She has spoken of the trauma of seeing him crawling into their isolated farmhouse with blood streaming down his face after being shot in the head. He survived but the family had to leave their rural home.

Sinn Fein have participated in a commemoration for Seamus McElwaine, the IRA man suspected of involvement in the attempted murder.

In 1988, as a schoolgirl, Mrs Foster survived another republican attack when the IRA targeted a part-time Ulster Defence Regiment soldier who was driving her school bus. She escaped relatively unscathed but a friend sitting close by suffered serious injuries.

Speaking in the House of Lords on Thursday, Baroness Foster said the glorification of terrorists and their organisations is not confined to Northern Ireland, and is a threat to the security of the nation as a whole.

She said: “I want to speak principally about Sinn Féin’s continued glorification of the terrorist organisation the Provisional IRA, and the consequences of that. However, recently, on the streets of some of our major cities, we have seen other proscribed organisations, such as Hamas, being lauded. That too has its consequences, particularly around radicalisation”.

The former first minister, who held power jointly with Martin McGuiness and Michelle O’Neill, said as someone who has lived with and through terrorism, she is “always alert to anything that would encourage it and bring back those dark days of intimidation, murder and mayhem”.

“Unfortunately, in the years since the cessation of IRA violence, there has been a strategy to lionise terrorists, putting them and their actions on a pedestal. There are many examples of Sinn Féin politicians, many of them senior people, attending commemorations and celebrations of the lives of those who sought to murder their neighbours”.

Citing her former colleague, Mrs Foster said: “Before Christmas, Michelle O’Neill, the vice-president of Sinn Féin and the current First Minister of Northern Ireland, attended a Provisional IRA commemoration in County Londonderry. The men she was commemorating before Christmas were killed by their own bomb as they travelled through Magherafelt in December 1971—long before Michelle O’Neill was born. Their names were Jim Sheridan, John Bateson and Martin Lee, all members of the self-styled South Derry Brigade of the IRA; it was announced after their deaths that they were on ‘active service’ at the time.

“Here were three young men with murder in their hearts, who had been dead for 53 years in December, and the current First Minister of Northern Ireland thought it appropriate to commemorate them. It goes without saying that, as on every occasion when this happens, the deep offence and hurt to those who have suffered at the hands of the IRA is revisited”.

She said the re-traumatisation of victims is “unforgivable and needs called out on every occasion it happens” – adding that “this public act of commemoration also sends a very clear message to young republicans that what these young men did was honourable. It glamorises what they did and, to young and impressionable people who have little knowledge or life experience of the brutality of the IRA, it makes them sound like heroes, which patently they were not".

Sinn Fein have been asked for comment, but at the time of going to print there had been no response.

Sinn Fein have one objective United Ireland. O'Neill and others salute the Provo IRA as hero's to republicanism of all generations. Their mantra is it's all change - we are in control of politics. Where is the unionist repost defending the Union with a unionist strategic plan?

'Inquiry is only route to justice for my son'... McCord's plea to Benn

Christopher, Woodhouse, Sunday Life, February 2nd, 2025

VETERAN victims' campaigner Raymond McCord has met with Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn to push for a full inquiry into his son's murder.

Raymond McCord Jnr (below) was 22 years old when he was murdered by the UVF in 1997, but nobody has ever been convicted of his killing.

Speaking to Sunday Life, Mr McCord said he and his solicitor Paul Farrell met with Mr Benn to call again for a full public inquiry into the circumstances of his son's killing.

He also asked Mr Benn to hold to Labour manifesto commitment and repeal the controversial Legacy Act.

A three-and-a-half-year Police Ombudsman investigation in 2007 established collusion between certain officers within Special Branch and the Mount Vernon UVF unit in north Belfast.

“Victims deserve better than what the Independent Commission on Reconciliation and Information Recovery (ICRIR) is offering,” he said.

“I'm requesting again. The only thing that is suitable for my son is a full public inquiry into his murder.”

Cathy McIlvenna, whose son Craig McCausland was also murdered by the UVF, joined Mr McCord for the meeting at the Northern Ireland Office's headquarters at Erskine House in Belfast.

Mr McCord said he is now pushing for a meeting with UN representatives as part of his campaign for justice for his son.

A long-awaited hearing into the killing of McCord Jnr was scheduled to take place early last year. However, amid issues around disclosure, a coroner decided against holding the inquest because it would not be completed before a cut-off date imposed by what is now the Legacy Act.

Mr McCord challenged the Act in the High Court and the decision to halt the inquest into his son's death without success.