Anger at killer UDA crime cartel given £1million ex-prisoners sweetener
SUNDAY LIFE INVESTIGATIONS, September 23rd, 2025
TAXPAYER CASH AIMED AT HELPING GANG'S FORMER INMATES ANGER AT CHARITY 'REWARD' FOR MOB BEHIND RECENT MURDERS AND UP TO ITS NECK IN DRUGS
More than £1m of public money is to be spent on helping South East Antrim UDA ex-prisoners find jobs and make a “positive civic contribution”, Sunday Life can reveal.
This is the first time organisations working with individuals with links to the loyalist organised crime gang — which split from the mainstream UDA in 2007 and is heavily involved in drug dealing and extortion — will benefit from taxpayers' cash.
Also boosted by the PEACEworks fund is an ex-prisoners body linked to ONH (Oglaigh na hEireann), the dissident gang currently involved in a violent internal feud, and an ex-prisoners group connected to the INLA which the PSNI recently said was involved in “drugs criminality”.
Both these projects, which have received taxpayers' support in the past, will each receive around £1m.
But it is the involvement of SEA UDA ex-prisoners in the PEACEworks scheme that has raised eyebrows.
Until now, the terror gang — which has murdered three people in the past eight years — has been shunned by government because of its overt involvement in criminality. But as Sunday Life first revealed in August 2023, the SEA UDA has been taking part in transitioning talks for several years.
This began with representatives of the terror gang meeting officials involved in the Stormont Executive's Tackling Paramilitarism, Criminality and Organised Crime programme.
Reward
The outworking of this was two UDA murals of masked men in the Monkstown and Rathcoole estates in Newtownabbey being replaced with images of the royal family.
As a reward for its 'good behaviour' SEA UDA ex-prisoners will be assisted through the PEACEworks scheme, which is led by Co-operation Ireland.
The prominent charity counts King Charles as patron, while former DUP first minister Arlene Foster sits on the board alongside retired ex-PSNI chief constable Sir George Hamilton.
A total of £2.9m of public money will now be distributed between ex-prisoner projects linked to the SEA UDA, ONH and INLA.
Responding to Sunday Life questions, Co-Operation Ireland named several organisations that will work with ex-paramilitary prisoners via the £2.9m PEACEworks scheme.
In the SEA UDA case, the group that will assist its ex-prisoners is the Dalriada Cultural/Historical Society, a Newtownabbey-based community group with no involvement in criminality.
A Co-operation Ireland spokesman said: “The PEACEworks Project, which was publicly announced last April, will engage with members of the EPFC (Ex-prisoner/former combatant) community through a range of activities and actions.
“These have been designed and planned to foster inter-community relations, tackle division and promote inclusion, peace and reconciliation.
“Included in the partnership is Co-operation Ireland, Charter NI, Teach Na Failte, Dalriada Cultural/Historical Society, and Cogus.”
On its website, the charity added that the programme will “create durable pathways into positive civic contribution” for ex-prisoners.
The £2.9m fund is being managed by the Special EU Programmes Body, with funding provided by PEACEPLUS, Department for Communities, and the Department of Rural and Community Development.
However, loyalist sources are scathing of the SEA UDA's connection to the PEACEworks programme, describing the organisation as a “drugs gang”.
“This is legalised extortion of the taxpayer, this is the government giving organisations working with individuals with links to a drugs gang £1m in return for it stopping murdering and beating people, and painting over a couple of murals,” said one insider.
“Tell anyone in Rathcoole, Monkstown or a housing estate in Carrick that the UDA is moving away from criminality and they will laugh in your face.”
The SEA UDA's move towards transitioning and government talks was sparked by an unlikely event — the near-fatal heart attack suffered by its former boss Gary Fisher in the summer of 2023.
Forced to stand down due to ill health, a new leadership entered into tentative transitioning talks with officials.
Among those involved in the negotiations, which included the UDA mural replacements, was veteran loyalist David 'Dodo' McCrea, who has no links to criminality.
But while some within the SEA UDA are supportive of transformation talks, others remain wedded to gangsterism.
Next month Clifford 'Trigger' Irons, the terror group's leader in Carrickfergus, is to be sentenced for conspiracy to possess 1.2kg of cocaine with intent to supply.
The 49-year-old was previously named in court as “the commander of the South East Antrim UDA”.
Due to be sentenced alongside Irons for the same drug dealing offence are Glen Burns (42), who was described during a court hearing as a “senior figure” in the UDA, and David Weir (43) and Daniel Vance (37), who were referred to as “important figures” in the gang.
Sunday Life understands that one of the SEA UDA ex-prisoners to benefit from the £2.9m PEACEworks funding scheme is convicted drug dealer and blackmailer William 'Duck' McTaggart.
The 55-year-old was released from prison in 2024 after serving a two-and-a-half year sentence for possessing £100,000 of cocaine with intent to supply.
He previously spent four-and-a-half years behind bars for attempting to extort £15,000 from a builder for the UDA.
ANGRY
Last summer McTaggart was prominent during anti-immigration protests in Newtownabbey that forced police to close the Shore Road into Belfast.
Loyalists say the public will rightly be angry when they see money being spent via PEACEworks on convicted UDA drug dealers like McTaggart.
“Anyone who served time recently for the SEA UDA was in Maghaberry (jail) for drug dealing or extortion, they weren't in there for taking the fight to republicans or defending the union,” a source told Sunday Life.
“Now we have £1m of public money being spent on them because the UDA has promised to behave itself, stop beating people and painted over a few murals.
“If anyone thinks the UDA is going to stop drug dealing or put an end to the rackets they are buttoned up the back.”
According to loyalists the 2020 murder of Glenn Quinn in Carrickfergus by a drugged-up SEA UDA gang is also key to the organisation moving towards transitioning. The terminally-ill 47-year-old was beaten to death after complaining about members of the terror gang intimidating his friend.
He was the third person to be murdered by the SEA UDA in a three-year period — Geordie Gilmore and Colin Horner were shot dead during an internal feud in 2017.
After the Quinn killing, the UDA reduced its punishment-style attacks and stopped kneecapping victims with firearms.
It was also recently reported that it has stopped taking £5 weekly 'dues' from its 2,000-strong membership based on its crime turf stretching from Ballymena to Larne and the edge of north Belfast.
A Million Pound Mural - South East Antrim UDA tribute to UK’s longest serving Monarch
Prisoner projects connected to republican terror gangs set for charity windfall
SUNDAY LIFE INVESTIGATIONS, November 23rd, 2025
Millions of pounds of taxpayer cash is to be given to ex-prisoner groups connected to republican gangs which the PSNI say remain heavily involved in criminality including murder.
Cogus and Teach na Failte, which represent former ONH (Oglaigh na hEireann) and INLA prisoners, will receive an equal share of around £2m from the PEACEworks scheme established to “work directly with the ex-prisoner/former combatant community”.
The seven-figure cash injection comes at a time when ONH is involved in a violent internal feud, and the INLA has been publicly accused of drug dealing.
Although republican ex-prisoner organisations, not everyone involved with Cogus or Teach na Failte are former paramilitaries, or have been involved in unlawful activities.
Police raids in Derry city last month which led to the discovery of a large quantity of cannabis were described by senior officers as targeting “drugs criminality linked to the INLA”.
Gangland
While the dismantling of a £1.4m cannabis factory in Strabane during the summer was also connected by the PSNI to the INLA.
However, this has not prevented the terror group's Teach na Failte ex-prisoners organisation benefiting from the new PEACEworks scheme and its total fund of £2.9m.
The same applies to ONH — the dissident gang currently involved in a bitter feud and which is responsible for seven gangland murders in Belfast in the past seven years.
The victims were ex-ONH members Danny McClean and Kieran Wylie, and drug dealers Sean Fox, Jim 'JD' Donegan, Warren Crossan, Mark Hall and Kevin Conway.
ONH split last year over attempts by one of its leaders, Carl Reilly, to take the group in a more political direction. This led to the attempted murder of one of his allies, Sean O'Reilly, earlier this year by the anti-ceasefire ONH faction.
Reilly's gang responded by posing for armed show of strength images and issuing revenge threats.
Despite this the Cogus ONH ex-prisoners group is in line for around £1m from the new government PEACEworks scheme.
ONH-linked charities have received public funding in the past through the now defunct Conflict Resolution Services Ireland (CSRI) charity. However, this is the first time Cogus will get any public money.
When Carl Reilly was jailed for 20 months for ONH membership in 2023, he claimed in court to be a charity employee who worked for funders.
The leading dissident said: “As part of my employment in CRSI, I am employed by a number of funders including the International Fund for Ireland, through Peter Sheridan, a former assistant chief constable, the Joseph Rowntree Trust, and the International Committee for the Red Cross.” Mr Sheridan later denied having anything to do with Reilly.
The INLA's ex-prisoners organisation Teach na Failte has also benefitted in the past from hundreds of thousands of pounds of funding via The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, an award that was later investigated by the Charity Commission.
PIRA smeared execution victim with brothel and sex tape lies
MARTIN DILLON, Sunday Life, November 23rd, 2025
MARTIN DILLON REOPENS CASE OF MURDERED MUM CAROLINE MORELAND SHOT DEAD WEEKS BEFORE CEASEFIRE, HER KILLING MADE LITTLE SENSE...UNLESS SHE WAS SACRIFICED TO SAVE LEADING PROVO
In July 1994 just six weeks before its ceasefire, the IRA brutally murdered Caroline Moreland, a 34-year-old mother-of-three from west Belfast, and dumped her body on the Fermanagh border.
When I first investigated this murder, I was stunned by the fact she was murdered so close to such a major political announcement.
What threat did she pose to the IRA that its leadership felt she had to be sacrificed and why did they launch a campaign of sexual smears against her?
Writers are often left to doubt, after finishing a non-fiction work, if it would have benefitted from additional research and new testimonials. In such instances, one may feel the necessity to revisit a work and incorporate new revelations to advance a narrative.
This was the case with Caroline whose story featured in my recent book, The Sorrow and the Loss — The Tragic Shadow Cast by the Troubles on the Lives of Women.
Her murder reminded me of the Disappeared victim, Jean McConville, a mother-of-10, also from west Belfast. Like Jean, Caroline was dragged from her home by armed members of the IRA's Belfast Brigade ISU — internal security unit — also known as the 'Nuttin' Squad'.
Like Jean, she was driven to a lonely border road and shot through the head execution style. She was then dumped on waste ground like a piece of garbage. Her autopsy lacked any evidence of torture or physical restraints prior to her death which raised its own questions.
Spies
The IRA branded her an informant and to prove their point, they forced her to record a statement of guilt which was handed to the BBC which reported: “In the recording of Caroline Moreland before she was murdered, she said she was pressurised into becoming a British informant and tells others they will not be harmed if they tell the IRA that the British authorities have tried to recruit them as spies.
“The victim was heard to say: 'I really regret getting caught up with these people and really regret what I have done. They told me I would go away for at least 25 years and that my children would be taken off me and put into the care of social services.
“It was at this point that I agreed to work for them. I wish that I'd been caught sooner but I really would advise anybody else that is in this situation to come forward and tell, and not listen to the things they tell you, the fear, that they put into you about what's going to happen to you. Just come forward and tell what you're doing'.”
The statement offers us a final glimpse into her life. It was delivered in a cool, calm manner and was written by her captors. I was reminded of Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's practices.
He would tell his advisers to announce to the Chinese people the advent of a new era of openness and transparency. The announcement had the desired effect of encouraging dissidents to emerge from the shadows to offer critiques of the Communist system.
When enough of them had spoken out, Mao would call back his advisors and order them to arrest his critics. “Now we know our enemy,” he would say. In a similar way, Caroline was used by the IRA to persuade informants to emerge from the shadows because the IRA was a sympathetic and forgiving organisation. They would be welcomed with open arms if they came forward and admitted their guilt. She was forced to deliver this lie before she was executed.
Did Caroline imagine that by broadcasting this appeal on behalf of the IRA, she would be forgiven and freed? I believe, she did.
Legion of Mary
After all, Jean McConville was led to believe her executioners were just charity workers of the Legion of Mary who would drive her over the border to a new life in the Republic.
The lie was designed to make her travel willingly with her killers to her place of execution. In Jean's case, since there was no body for a pathologist to examine, it was difficult to conclude if she was mistreated while in IRA custody which was not an uncommon practice.
The pathologist's report on Caroline Moreland's remains did not indicate physical or sexual assaults, or the use of restraints on her hands and ankles.
It seemed she did not need to be physically bound during the fortnight she was held by members of ISU and presumably court-martialled.
There was no doubt her captors persuaded her, like they did Jean McConville, that she would be driven to the Irish Republic where she could make a new life for herself and her children.
Sadly, we may never know what she was thinking at that moment as well as the extent to which she was manipulated. She is not here to tell us what had transpired while in custody, and snippets offered by some sources are not enough to complete the picture.
When I was writing her story, I never bought the official IRA version she was sacrificed to send word to the rank and file of the republican movement that “working with the Brits would never be tolerated, ceasefire or no ceasefire”.
The underlying message to informers it was claimed, was that the IRA was not going anywhere.
Scandal
For a subsequent investigation, I approached an old source of mine who said that recordings like the one Caroline made were highly irregular. It was obvious the Provo leadership was determined to offset any future public blowback after Caroline's murder. The decision to kill her was likely taken at a very high level, involving senior republican movement figures.
To kill a mother-of-three after the tragic demise of Jean McConville and the scandal of the Disappeared, so close to the ceasefire, meant only people at the top of the organisation would have signed Caroline's death warrant. Besides, she was a member of the IRA, a fact the leadership was aware of, and has consistently denied.
“Some of us felt there had to be more to this,” the source added.
When I made up my mind to revisit this case, I discovered increased pressure from some IRA elements to discredit her reputation.
Stories were circulated that she was a woman of loose morals who used sex to entrap many IRA men, some of them happily married. One allegation was that her home was a brothel and like the infamous American paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein, she built compromising dossiers on her lovers, secretly recording and videotaping them in lurid acts. Allegations of that kind were deployed to suggest that some members of the West Belfast IRA, frightened for their reputations, demanded her execution.
I was informed by a republican source that the IRA was more or less pressured to kill her by its members who feared their marriages would be in jeopardy should their wives discover they had been at parties in her home, or in her company, and there was a genuine risk she possessed compromising information which might have landed into the hands of Special Branch.
I considered this another bogus piece of information being used to justify killing her.
Still, why were senior Sinn Fein/IRA figures suddenly behind an ongoing campaign aimed at ruining Caroline's reputation?
The answer lay in the existence of a secret lover who held meetings in her home. The IRA commander, Martin McGuinness, was at one of those meetings.
Pivotal
A figure very active to this day in smearing Caroline Moreland's reputation is her secret lover who was a close confidant of Martin McGuinness.
This individual held senior positions in the Northern Command, Belfast Brigade and at one stage was a member of the IRA's General Headquarters.
He was a pivotal figure in the negotiations surrounding the Good Friday Agreement. There is evidence that after Special Branch recruited Caroline, they bugged her home, knowing it was used for IRA meetings.
In 2014, Martin McGuinness met the Moreland family and their lawyers and sounded concerned but promised little. It was a classic McGuinness performance.
The irony was that he was one of the important voices who approved killing Caroline.
I felt I had to know what the IRA leadership was trying desperately to hide and why they simply did not let her go with a warning since this was so close to the end of their war.
NEXT WEEK: Was Caroline Moreland murdered to protect State assets in the IRA's Belfast Brigade and Northern Command leadership?
Splashing a million of our money on a gang of thugs beyond sick
SUZANNE BREEN, Sunday Life, November 23rd, 2025
Public services in Northern Ireland are collapsing, and we're constantly told there's not enough money to fix them.
Every Stormont minister is grappling with huge challenges. They argue that they've insufficient funds to maintain existing services, let alone do what is desperately needed.
As winter approaches, more and more parents are struggling to heat their homes and feed their kids. Pensioners face equally tough times.
But fiscal austerity isn't something the South East Antrim UDA will have to deal with. Scrooge won't be visiting their doors this Christmas. For them, the system is far from stingy and spartan.
More than £1m of public money is to be spent helping their ex-prisoners find jobs and make a “positive civic contribution”.
A group working with the former inmates — the Dalriada Culture and Historical Society — has been accepted onto the PEACEworks scheme. Nobody involved with the society has any criminal links.
Yet it's shameful that the South East Antrim UDA is set to benefit from taxpayers' money. Just think what £1m could be used for instead. How many nurses could it employ? How many mental health programmes could it run? How many hip replacements could it fund?
A million quid could buy hundreds of thousands of school meals. It could heat countless pensioners' homes. The food banks in South East Antrim could spend that money well.
The PEACEworks scheme will be led by Co-operation Ireland. The prominent charity's patron is King Charles. Its chairman is Sir Julian King, a former British ambassador to Ireland and ex-director general of the Northern Ireland Office.
Funding for the PEACEworks schemes comes from the PEACEPLUS programme which itself is co-funded by the British and Irish governments, the Executive, and the EU.
There are far, far better ways for Brussels and Dublin to spend their money. But it is those decision-makers in London and Belfast who should really hang their heads in shame because they know exactly what the South East Antrim UDA is.
It's often said that having a past in Northern Ireland shouldn't deny you a future. There is merit in that argument.
Many former loyalist and republican prisoners have contributed significantly to their communities and society generally. But the South East Antrim UDA remains heavily involved in drug dealing and extortion.
Shunned
The war is over more than 30 years. Some of those who participated in it are dead. The rest are surely either retirement age or rapidly heading towards it.
So who exactly are these ex-prisoners looking for work? How many will have been jailed for drugs, thuggery and other not conflict-related offences?
This paramilitary gang — which has murdered three people in the past eight years — was once shunned by the Government.
But in recent years it has been in “transitioning” talks with officials from Stormont's Tackling Paramilitarism, Criminality and Organised Crime programme.
This has resulted in two murals of masked men in the Monkstown and Rathcoole estates being replaced with images of the royal family. Such farce passes for progress in Northern Ireland.
The windfall for the South East Antrim UDA prisoners was described as “legalised extortion” to this newspaper.
“This is the government giving organisations working with individuals with links to a drugs gang £1m in return for it stopping murdering and beating people, and painting over a couple of murals,” an insider said.
“Tell anyone in Rathcoole, Monkstown or Carrick that the UDA is moving away from criminality and they will laugh in your face.”
Five years after the gang murdered Glenn Quinn, the PSNI still don't have enough information to charge anybody.
The 47-year-old, who was terminally ill from a blood condition, was brutally beaten to death by three men in his home.
Unable to fight back, Quinn tried to roll into a ball to protect himself. His assailants then fled, leaving him to die a slow and painful death from his injuries which included multiple rib fractures.
His sister Lesley Murphy said: “I've seen first-hand Glenn's injuries and what I've seen will never leave me.”
Splashing the cash on the group responsible is beyond sick.
Families of IRA victims in England told new Troubles Bill could revive path to justice
Security minister Dan Jarvis says scrapping immunity scheme would give relatives a renewed chance for answers
Steven Morris, Guardian, November 17th, 2025
The families of more than 70 people killed by the IRA and other paramilitaries in unsolved attacks on English soil can once again hope for justice under the new Northern Ireland Troubles bill, the UK government has claimed.
As MPs in the House of Commons prepared to debate the bill for the first time on Tuesday, the Home Office said there remained 77 unsolved killings, including 39 British armed forces personnel in English towns and cities, from the time of the Troubles. It said more than 1,000 people were injured in the attacks.
Until now much of the focus of discussion about the bill has been the possible impact it may have on former and current British service personnel who could face legal proceedings over incidents that happened decades ago.
But the UK government is keen to stress that if its new bill becomes law, it opens up the possibility of justice – or at least answers – for families who lost loved ones dating back half a century.
The security minister, Dan Jarvis, said: “The last government’s Legacy Act shut down police investigations and proposed immunity for terrorists. This left many families feeling they had nowhere to go to continue their search for justice, or simply for answers about what happened to their loved ones.”
Jarvis, a former member of the Parachute regiment who served in Northern Ireland, continued: “This government’s legislation will put that right. It guarantees no terrorist will be able to claim immunity from prosecution, while ensuring there is an effective and wholly independent legacy commission to conduct investigations that families right across the United Kingdom can have confidence in.”
The UK government says that if measures in its new Troubles bill become law, a reformed legacy commission would have enhanced powers enabling it to conduct full police investigations, where there is evidence of criminality. The immunity scheme would also be scrapped.
The Home Office said unsolved Troubles-related attacks on English soil ranged from the 1974 M62 coach bombing when 12 people were killed and 38 injured to the 1996 Manchester bombing in which more than 200 people were hurt.
Graeme Downie, the MP for Dunfermline and Dollar, whose friend Tim Parry was killed aged 12 in the Warrington bomb attacks in 1993, said families who lost loved ones should still have the chance for answers.
He said: “I don’t know what happened that day in Warrington in 1993 other than someone I was friends with and played football with every week had been killed. I don’t know precisely who did it. There was talk of a rogue IRA unit but no answers.
“I don’t seek revenge and I don’t think the Parry family ever expect to get justice, but I do want answers and so do hundreds of others.”
He said if the new legislation helped just one family it would be worthwhile.
Mo Norton, the sister of bombardier Terence Griffin, who was killed in the M62 coach bombing aged 24, said: “He served two tours in Northern Ireland, and it was conflict that took him – not on the battlefield, but on a coach returning from leave.
“He was proud of his service, but never boastful. He had plans – hopes for the future. That morning, everything changed. Twelve lives were lost, including children. Our family was shattered. There was no warning, no chance to say goodbye. Just silence, and then years of unanswered questions.
“I need to know that Terence’s death has been fully investigated, I don’t think it has been properly investigated in the past.”
