New remains found during search for 'Disappeared' victim Joe Lynskey

Olivia Peden, Belfast Telegraph, May 17th, 2025

CALL TO KEEP AN 'OPEN MIND' AFTER FIND AT THE SITE OF PREVIOUS PROBE IN CO MONAGHAN

Partial human remains found at a cemetery at the centre of a search for one of the Disappeared have been sent for testing.

Former monk Joe Lynskey was abducted, murdered, and secretly buried by the IRA in 1972.

The latest find, announced yesterday evening, again centres on Annyalla Cemetery in Co Monaghan — the scene of a previous probe in recent months.

Further fragments of remains have been found at a different part of the graveyard at a small site described as being “of interest”.

While investigators are keeping an open mind and have urged caution, the Lynskey family has been informed.

Last year a body was recovered from a burial plot at the cemetery by investigators searching for the west Belfast man, who was 40 when he vanished. However, DNA testing showed the remains were not those of Mr Lynskey.

Not a family grave site

Eamonn Henry, lead investigator of the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims' Remains (ICLVR), said: “Following the recent exhumation at Annyalla Cemetery in relation to the search for Joe Lynskey, information came to the ICLVR indicating another small area of interest within the confines of the cemetery.

“This was not another family grave site.

“I want to emphasise that this information did not relate directly to the disappearance of Joe Lynskey, and so until we have a positive identification or the elimination of the remains as those of Joe Lynskey or any of the other of the Disappeared, we have to keep an open mind.”

The Irish State Pathologist has been notified and the remains have been taken away for further examination.

Confirming that relatives of Mr Lynskey have been informed, Mr Henry said: “We know only too well that the Lynskey family have had hopes raised before only to be bitterly disappointed and so, as ever, expectations have to be managed.

“The process of identification could take some time and we will continue to offer the family what support we can.”

There have been several failed attempts to find Mr Lynskey's remains.

Mr Lynskey was not on the original list of nine Disappeared victims handed over to the British and Irish governments by the IRA in 1999.

PIRA only admitted responsibility in 2010

It was not until 2010 that the IRA admitted to the murder and secret burial, saying that it would work with the ICLVR to help recover his body.

In total, 17 people were abducted, murdered and secretly buried during the Troubles.

Four cases remain outstanding — Mr Lynskey, Robert Nairac, Seamus Maguire and Columba McVeigh.

Last November, the ICLVR said it received information about suspicious activity during the 1970s at a grave in Annyalla Cemetery.

An exhumation at the cemetery, between Monaghan town and Castleblayney, took place.

The plot that was exhumed belongs to the family of the former Bishop of Ferns, Brendan Comiskey, who died last month.

But in March, the ICLVR said DNA test results did not match Mr Lynskey, those of the Comiskey family, or any of the remaining Disappeared.

Irish police notified the local coroner and said attempts had begun to find out who the remains belonged to.

The story of the Disappeared was thrust back into the spotlight following the release of the Disney Plus series, Say Nothing.

The drama focuses on events during the Troubles including the disappearance of mother-of-10 Jean McConville as well as Kevin McKee, Seamus Wright and Mr Lynskey.

In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph this week, Mr Henry, who recently took over from Jon Hill as lead investigator of the ICLVR, said he was determined to find the four men who are still missing.

“I don't subscribe to the belief that these victims will not be found — I wouldn't have taken this job if that was the case,” he said.

“I do believe the remaining Disappeared will be found.

“I will do this job until these four people are recovered.”

Anyone with information on the four outstanding Disappeared cases can contact the ICLVR on 01 602 8655, by email to secretary@iclvr.ie or ICLVR PO Box 10827 Dublin, Ireland.

Time for truth -Ulster Gaels come out to back Brown family

John Breslin, Irish News, May 17th, 2025

GAELS from across Ulster last night came out to support the family of murdered GAA official Sean Brown, descending in their thousands on the small Co Derry village of Bellaghy.

GAA club members arrived from all corners in support of the demand by the family for a public inquiry into the 1997 loyalist murder of the 61-year-old father-of-six.

Organisers of the ‘Walk for Truth’ said the response to calls to join the march was “remarkable” as representatives from a large number of clubs across the province came to march through the village last night.

Mr Brown, a one-time club chairman of Wolfe Tones GAA Club in Bellaghy, was attacked and beaten as he locked its gates before being abducted and later shot dead near Randalstown, Co Antrim, on May 12 1997.

The Court of Appeal has ruled a public inquiry must be held but this is opposed by Secretary of State Hilary Benn and the UK government.

Mr Benn has indicated the ruling will be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Traffic management plans were in place for the march, while the Wolfe Tones club, the organisers, said there would be plenty of stewards to direct traffic and look after the huge numbers expected to gather.

Club representative Thomas Hughes said officials worked hard on logistics of organising the match as it became apparent a huge number of people were prepared to travel to the village.

Parades Commission and PSNI

They received support from, and liaised with, the Parades Commission and the PSNI, whose officers looked after traffic coming in and out of the village. Local Bellaghy residents were asked to leave their cars at home and walk to the start point of the march at St Mary’s Church, unless they had mobility issues.

The walk started at 7pm from the church car park as those taking part marched through the village to Wolfe Tones’ ground, Páirc Seán de Brún, named after the murdered former chairman. It took close to 40 minutes to make the walk, one that normally take around 17 minutes.

A rally was held at the ground, with speakers including members of Mr Brown’s family.

Mr Brown’s daughter Siobhan had earlier said the organisers are “calling on all Gaels across Ireland to support us in that call for a public inquiry”.

Gaelic clubs in Derry and further afield were asked to join the “act of solidarity”, with those attending urged to wear their club colours.

Clubs even re-arranged fixtures and training sessions to allow their members to travel to Bellaghy.

McGrath intelligence rejected by higher authorities in MI5

Chris Moore, Irish News, May 17th, 2025

In an extract from his new book Kincora: Britain’s shame, Chris Moore recounts an ‘intriguing interlude’ involving William McGrath, a suspected MI5 agent and house master at the boys’ home which was at the centre of a sex abuse scandal

THE message (William) McGrath communicated to Tara’s members – and which they took back to their friends, colleagues and fellow travellers in various other organisations – was that Protestants should lay claim to what had once been theirs by right: the Irish culture and language.

Part of the scenario was the removal of the Catholic Church from the reclaimed Protestant Irish State of the future, a position encapsulated in Tara literature by the catch-cry: Tara – the hard core of Protestant resistance – resistance with responsibility! We hold Ulster that Ireland might be saved and that Britain be reborn.

McGrath’s commitment to reclaiming the Irish culture and language was demonstrated in a significant change to the Orange lodge of which he was a member.

On 20 April 1970 a letter was sent to all members of St Mary’s Fellowship Temperance LOL 1303, with some exciting news.

It informed them, ‘The Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland has agreed to the name of our Lodge being changed to “Ireland’s Heritage LOL 1303”.’ Lodge members were asked to help raise £150 to cover the cost of a new banner.

McGrath was already using a new Ireland’s Heritage stamp on lodge correspondence – a harp with a crown perched on top, surrounded by shamrock and orange lilies.

According to members of the lodge and of Tara, he took great pride in marrying together symbols normally associated with sectarian opposites, especially in placing the crown of British royalty above the harp of the Irish Republic.

The new banner was certainly unique in the history of the Order, for it included Gaelic inscriptions.

One side showed the harp, adorned with the crown and the emblems of Munster, Connacht, Leinster and Ulster – the old version of the nine-county Ulster flag, by now widely regarded as nationalist.

‘Occupy till I come’

The reverse side carried the inscription ‘Oidhreacht Éireann’ (Ireland’s Heritage) and a map of the thirty-two counties of Ireland, with the crests of Londonderry, Belfast, Dublin and Cork. Underneath, ‘Luke 19:13’ appeared in small lettering, and then, in larger letters, ‘Occupy till I Come’.

Both sides were decorated with orange lilies; hanging from them were traditional Irish Celtic crosses, a design idea that came from Roy Garland.

One intriguing interlude from this period was when a stranger turned up wanting to join Ireland’s Heritage, with the idea of using that as a springboard to get into Tara.

The Englishman, a former British soldier called James Millar, was on his first mission as an agent of MI5.

I met him in 1990 at his home in the south of England, and he recalled the difficulty he had in getting into McGrath’s Orange lodge.

He did manage to join, but on his first appearance at a Tara meeting in Clifton Street Orange Hall he was identified as a suspected British agent by a member of the UVF, who approached Roy Garland to tell him about the interloper.

Garland informed McGrath, who instructed his second in command to escort the man from the building.

Millar told me his handlers did not seem too disappointed that he had been detected and told him to forget all about Tara and McGrath.

Told to forget about McCgrath and Tara

When he tried to pass the information he had gathered on to his handlers, they repeated their insistence that he forget all about McGrath and Tara.

From that time on, he was forbidden to mention Tara, McGrath or Ireland’s Heritage, although he was never told why.

Over the years, this man would not be the only agent to take an interest in McGrath and Tara, nor was he alone in finding his intelligence unexpectedly rejected by those in higher authority.

As 1970 drew to a close, Tara maintained a membership of hundreds from all over Northern Ireland.

Those who joined did not take oaths but accepted a faith and freedom creed drafted by McGrath.

He was against oaths because he insisted that Tara was not an organisation like other pseudo-paramilitary groupings; rather it had been established specifically for the ‘doomsday’ situation.

For the time being, it was sufficient to engage Tara members in discussions of how they could defend their homeland against attack.

UVF challenge to McGrath on his sexual orientation

However, the UVF had been investigating detailed reports it had received, and it was concluded that McGrath was working for British Intelligence.

As a result its members left Tara one night after a meeting in which McGrath was challenged by the UVF leader ‘Bo’ McClelland.

McClelland’s questions were specifically aimed at forcing McGrath into revealing that he was homosexual.

McGrath became embarrassed and responded by calling for McClelland to be ‘drummed out’.

The UVF leader stood up and called for his men to leave. They did so, never to return.

McClelland and the UVF, from that time on, made it their business to hamper the work of Tara at every opportunity. McGrath, meanwhile, denounced the quality of loyalist leadership and the criminality of loyalist organisations, while at the same time he was busy covertly gathering guns to be used in his ‘doomsday’ scenario.

However, by 1971, without the UVF membership, Tara was beginning to decline, and the revelations about McGrath’s sexuality had begun to damage his standing in his new Orange lodge, temporarily at least.

This was also the year he was given the job in Kincora working boys’ hostel – which would see the worst of those revelations confirmed.

‘As long as I’m able, my message is that peace is always possible’

Nobel Prize-winner Mairead Corrigan Maguire speaks to Denzil McDaniel about the Peace People and her five decades of activism around the world

THE French prime minister at the end of the First World War, Georges Clemenceau, believed that winning the war was one thing but “winning the peace” would be a much more difficult task, saying: “It is far easier to make war than peace.”

The cause of peace and the fight for it has been central to Nobel Laureate Mairead Corrigan Maguire’s life for almost half a century, after she co-founded The Peace People in 1976 as a result of a shocking family tragedy in the Troubles.

Reflecting on the beginning of her activism in opposing violence from wherever it came, and continuing her struggle internationally today, Mairead believes that Northern Ireland’s example provides many lessons worldwide.

She speaks in particular about the “evil” of violence visited on children, having recently completed a 40-day fast for “the children of Gaza and the children of the world”.

Mairead believes that “peace is a natural way of life” for many people, their families and communities, but society needs to “learn the science of peace”.

“We know the science of war. We know how to make wars but haven’t implemented the culture of peace,” she says.

“There is a goodness in people’s hearts. A desire for peace is very much there.”

Mairead was just 32 when three children of her sister Anne Maguire, the youngest just six weeks old, were killed in Andersonstown in west Belfast when British troops fired on an IRA man’s car and it careered out of control as he was fatally wounded, crashing into them as they walked along Finaghy Road North.

“ We know the science of war. We know how to make wars but haven’t implemented the culture of peace

Anne’s six-week-old son Andrew, who was in his pram, died instantly along with his eight-year-old sister Joanne.

Their two-year-old brother John died of his injuries the following day.

Anne, who suffered severe injuries and mental trauma, later took her own life.

Mairead recalls: “1976 was a particularly sad time for many people in Northern Ireland. We were living the Troubles. Every day there were bombs and bullets. Many people were suffering, and we were on the brink of civil war. It was very bad.

“Three of my sister’s children were killed in a fight between the Irish Republican Army and the British Army. At that stage I came out and called for an end to the violence because there was so much unnecessary suffering.

‘We just articulated what was there in the community’

“I always believed political change was coming – like the tide, you don’t stop it. But when violence comes, it destroys the opportunity for quick change. I’m absolutely convinced of that.

“Violence is always wrong, no matter who uses it, whether it be state violence or the paramilitaries. It is always, always wrong.

“It was a call from the heart to say there’s another way. We can solve this through dialogue and negotiation.”

Corrigan’s cry would prove a touchstone for people across Northern Ireland yearning for peace and saw the formation of the Peace People, an organisation which still campaigns for peace across the world today.

Another Andersonstown woman, Betty Williams, witnessed the crash which claimed the lives of the three Maguire children and joined her call for an end to violence.

They were later joined by journalist Ciaran McKeown and all three became prominent campaigners for peace.

Mairead recalls: “With Betty Williams and Ciaran McKeown, my two great friends, the three of us worked together to organise peace rallies and the people of Northern Ireland came out in their thousands to say let’s try another way, which was wonderful.

“People didn’t want violence but didn’t always know how to stop the violence.

“I think we just articulated what was there in the community.”

As a result of their efforts, Corrigan and Williams were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.

After the Nobel Prize

While Williams and McKeown have since died, Mairead has continued to carry the flame for peace internationally.

“Since the Nobel Peace Prize, I’ve travelled the world to most conflict situations, in Iraq, North Korea, South Korea, Afghanistan, Syria; all those places in the height of their conflict,” she says.

“I’ve always found people wanting peace. Usually, governments get in the way. Governments set down laws even today. People want to work for peace and write for peace. Instead of helping them, governments are often bombing them, locking them up and silencing them.

“We need to raise our voices,” she says, pointing out that in a sense that was what she was doing with a 40-day fast.

“It will send out clearly from my body. I believe we have got to turn, as the human family, on to a different road because the road we are on of militarism, of reinstating nuclear bombs, this is the road to destruction.”

A recent attack on activists off the coast of Malta on the ship Conscience, aiming to sail to Gaza with medicine and food, brought back memories of when Corrigan Maguire – she is married to Anne Maguire’s widower, Jackie – sailed on similar boats.

“We actually got into Gaza on one occasion. On the rest we were arrested and deported,” she recalls.

“This is Israeli policy, they’re trying to cut off for two months the food for the children of Gaza.

“Can you believe it? You don’t even read stories so cruel and horrible in the Old Testament. It is cruelty of the utmost that Israel has a policy like this.

“Little children, more than we know, they worry about the world. Things upset them, they worry about their family, their mummies and daddies. They have a lot of anxiety and tension.

“I think it’s important today that we protect them from those scenes on television where people are being massacred and killed.

“It’s horrific. So, we must protect them and above all see that they’re taken care of and not go on with the madness of wars.

“There is nothing good about three little children being killed in a violent clash when they didn’t need to be. There’s nothing good about children being starved as a form of policy. This is evil.

“It’s evil to subject little children to this. We must proclaim the preciousness of our children and our grandchildren,” she says.

Throughout the interview, Corrigan Maguire rails against militarism and war.

She speaks of the madness of governments talking about rearmament and nuclear weapons.

“It’s insane,” she says.

“We are at the kind of point, I think, as a human family where Northern Ireland was in 1976 when we could have gone down in civil war,” she says, adding that other countries could study what happened here when “very courageous people from all sides” got together.

“The Peace People years ago asked Stormont to set up a Department of Peace where we would study alternatives to war so that young people could say here’s an alternative,” she says.

“Instead of spending money on weapons of war we need money to build houses and have our health service.

“I would love to see Stormont take very seriously its moral obligation to be a peace example to the world. Northern Ireland is a deeply complex ethnic political problem which militarism doesn’t solve. We know that.

“Militarism doesn’t solve human social problems.

“The only alternative is peace building and peace-making. You need resources, people, a structure. You need to take it seriously.

“If Northern Ireland begins to see a great opportunity as a people to say to the world ‘we know we have ethnic political problems but you can solve them’.

“If you applied that and said to Israel and Palestine we will help you. Come and look at what happened here and use the methods that we used because the way you’re going now is the way to destruction.

“We need that kind of visionary leadership coming out of Northern Ireland. We have a great responsibility to the world.

“I feel if enough people unite and raise their voice non-violently, peacefully, to say we have got to regain our humanity and our freedom and our dignity as human beings, and reach out to help, we can turn this around.”

The children of Gaza

She agrees it’s not easy taking a stand today for human rights and democracy, and for the children of Gaza.

“But in all conscience we have to do this,” she insists.

“We all have a responsibility to take chances for peace and to speak truth to power, otherwise who’s going to say to the Israeli government, to the British government, where’s your human rights, where’s your justice for your own people.

“Who’s going to say to the American government what you’re doing is wrong? You’re sending arms to the Israelis?

“Who’s going to say to the Irish government you’re allowing troops to go through Shannon to bomb foreign countries, like Iraq, Syria?

“We can solve these problems by talking together, all the different faith traditions and people of no faith coming together and say it’s about humanity. We are all brothers and sisters in the world today and we can solve the problems through the science of peace.

“As long as I’m fit and healthy and able to do so, my message is that peace is possible – perpetual and permanent peace and not temporary ceasefires.”

‘Terrifying’ racist attack by teenage gang in Belfast

Allan Preston, Irish News, May 17th, 2025

A RACIST attack in Belfast involving up to 15 teenagers has been described as “absolutely terrifying”.

SDLP south Belfast councillor Gary McKeown was responding after a man in his 20s was targeted while walking home along the Donegall Road area on Thursday night.

At around 10.25pm, police said the man was approached by up to 15 teenagers at the junction of Pandora Street.

After surrounding him, they proceeded to throw punches at him and injured his nose.

A traffic cone was also thrown in his direction before the attackers stole his bike.

Mr McKeown said: “This incident must have been absolutely terrifying for the victim, and I’m sure he really feared for his life after being surrounded by such a large group and attacked.

“Violence like this has no place in our society and needs to be condemned in the strongest terms.

“Assaulting someone and making them fear for their life because of the colour of their skin or where they are from is disgusting and we cannot allow the regularity of racist incidents to normalise this kind of behaviour or create the idea that it’s anything other than abhorrent.

“My thoughts are with this man as he comes to terms with his ordeal,” he added.

The victim’s bike was later recovered some distance away from the incident, with South Belfast Neighbourhood Inspector Róisín Brown calling the unprovoked attack “completely unacceptable”.

“He has been left shaken and distressed, as well as sustaining an injury which required medical treatment,” she said.

“We are treating this as a racially-motivated hate crime.

“Hate crime has no place in our society and we will be proactive in our approach to ensure justice for victims,” she added.

“Our investigation is ongoing and local officers are working to identify those involved so that they can be held to account for their actions.

“We will continue to engage closely with partner agencies and local advocacy groups as our enquiries continue and we would appeal to anyone who might have any information which could assist us to bring these offenders to justice to get in touch.

NIE could have paid Storm Éowyn compo bill five times over 

Sam McBride, Northern Editor, Belfast Telegraph, May 17th, 2025

CAOIMHE ARCHIBALD SUGGESTED IT WOULD BE FINANCIALLY PROBLEMATIC FOR THE ELECTRICITY FIRM TO COMPENSATE THOSE HARDEST HIT - BUT IT CAN NOW BE REVEALED IT COULD EASILY HAVE PAID THOSE WORST AFFECTED INVESTIGATION

The electricity company which Sinn Fein said couldn't be asked to compensate those who suffered in Storm Éowyn was so profitable that it could have paid the most expensive compensation considered five times over — and still been in profit.

Stormont documents obtained by the Belfast Telegraph demolish the argument Sinn Fein accepted — that NIE Networks would somehow have struggled financially if it had to pay compensation.

The documents also expose how Stormont ministers' ham-fisted populism made it harder to reconnect those cut off from the electrical grid by the storm.

When Storm Éowyn struck with deadly force in January, the Executive said it was “committed to doing everything it can” and promised to “leave no stone unturned to get the support necessary” for those who'd suffered the most.

Instead, the Executive's bungling did the opposite. Ministers quickly came out to say that NIE Networks — the company which owns the electrical transmission system — should compensate those whose power was cut off for significant periods of time.

First Minister Michelle O'Neill said “we believe there should be a goodwill payment” and that it was “unacceptable” that householders had extra bills as a result of the electricity being off. Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly said they had “urged NIE to go away, consider our proposal for a goodwill payment... we see no reason why that shouldn't happen here”.

Why there was no compensation

The reason ministers were reduced to begging NIE to pay compensation is that they'd decided not to compel the company to do so, as happens in the rest of the UK.

As far back as 2017 — eight years ago — the Utility Regulator recommended that Stormont update its legislation to enable payments for extreme weather events. It wasn't done. It was proposed again in 2023. Again, nothing was done.

Documents obtained by this newspaper under the Environmental Information Regulations show that on January 28, the day after O'Neill and Pengelly's announcement, the then Economy Minister Conor Murphy wrote to the Utility Regulator to say that Executive ministers had met NIE's managing director and requested the company make a “goodwill payment”.

He asked the regulator to work with the company to “agree what is going to be paid”, “agree how it is going to be paid” and “when the payments will be made”.

All of those statements implied no question over the payment of compensation, focusing solely on the mechanics and timing of the payments.

However, the letter shows that even at this early stage Murphy was aware that the cost of this compensation would come from other customers, adding: “Obviously, the cost of these payments will have to be recovered from grid charges [in effect, customer bills].”

Ministers love to announce good news and Murphy showed urgency about going public about the compensation announcement, telling the regulator: “I want to be in a position to make a public statement about this tomorrow.”

The following day, an official wrote on behalf of Richard Rodgers, the most senior official in the Department for the Economy's (DfE) energy division. All other names have been censored, making it difficult to tell who the person was writing to, but they said there was to be an urgent meeting in relation to a letter and position paper sent by NIE to the first and deputy first ministers that morning.

The official wrote: “It effectively provides an envelope for the approach to compensation. Your task is to work out what will be paid/how it will be paid and when it will be paid.”

Two days later, Murphy told the public that it had been “agreed in principle” that people impacted by the storm would be compensated.

Yet he'd already been told that such pronouncements were making the situation worse. In a January 28 letter to the Executive, a senior NIE figure, whose name has been blacked out, told the Executive: “NIE Networks is currently focused on the full restoration of the electricity network after the most extreme storm that we have ever experienced...we want to get the lights back on in every house in Northern Ireland as quickly as we can.”

The letter went on: “Under the current legislation, NIE Networks should not be required to make payments as a result of the most extreme weather event on record, for which the company was not at fault.

“Suggestions that it should make such payments, while in the middle of the recovery from this unprecedented weather event, have caused a huge influx of calls to our contact centre which has reduced our ability to speak to people who are still without power, or to be notified of any new developing emergency situations.”

Legislation updated in Britain but not North

Another document, which is undated and unsigned, stated that in GB legislation was updated last year to cover compensation for severe weather.

With Stormont having chosen not to update the NI law, the document said that “compensation or goodwill payments by NIE Networks would be likely to have a material negative effect on the financeability of the NIE Networks business, and consequently its ability to deliver necessary network investment for electricity customers in Northern Ireland”.

The document said that if NIE voluntarily paid out on the same basis as in Britain, the total estimated cost would be more than £55m — an early estimate which would soon be revised down drastically.

It went on to say: “Rather than proceed with any voluntary payments at this time, the necessary framework for compensatory payments during a severe weather event should be further advanced and finalised… before NIE Networks can be expected to issue any compensation payments to customers.”

By February 5, the urgency had gone, and talk of payments definitely being made vanished. Ministers who'd been keen to talk when they thought they'd be associated with a popular decision to compensate became quiet.

One of Murphy's officials emailed colleagues to say that a working group was being set up to advise the minister. But this was no longer being treated as an emergency, with the official suggesting that the mid-term holiday “may present difficulties” and so they should maybe not meet for another 12 days. A joint assessment by the regulator and NIE was sent to civil servants on February 18.

The four-page document, set out in table format, stated that NIE had ruled out voluntary compensation because “it would be exposing itself to a significant financial risk”. That was despite the fact that the plan would probably involve NIE recovering much of the money from customers in future bills.

A further problem was that while NIE knew what areas had been disconnected from the grid for how long, this wasn't broken down precisely by homes, something it argued meant it couldn't be certain who deserved compensation.

It claimed this meant “the likely outcome is low levels of customer satisfaction”.

Estimated cost to customers of £14 to £24

The cost of such a scheme was estimated at about £23m, leading to an increase in domestic bills of £14 the following year and £24 if all domestic and business customers were to pay.

Introducing a more generous scheme equivalent to that in GB would require Stormont to pass legislation — and that couldn't be applied retrospectively so “is not viable as a solution to Storm Éowyn”, it said.

The most expensive option considered was estimated to cost NIE about £35m.

The table, a civil servant said, provided an assessment of compensation being funded by customers “in line with minister Conor Murphy's request”.

Even if NIE had paid the highest compensation considered, it would still have been lounging in cash. Last week it emerged that NIE is so exceptionally profitable that it recently paid a dividend of £53.6m to its parent company ESB, which is owned by the Irish Government.

The company's profits before tax almost doubled to £180.8m last year — a sum so great that it could have paid compensation five times more generous than the most expensive option on the table and still been in profit.

There is a counterargument that this storm wasn't the company's fault and it shouldn't be penalised for that.

But in the absence of anyone stepping up to help those who suffered most during the storm, that means that the poorest of those people end up suffering the most.

For those on the minimum wage who lost a freezer full of food, the cost falls where it can least be afforded.

NIE might not like paying out — no company would want to pay anything beyond what it was compelled to pay — but it demonstrably could have done so without getting into the sort of major financial difficulties implied by Sinn Fein when it defended not making the company pay up.

NIE is Irish state company

There is a further complication in that NIE is fully owned by the Irish Government.

There is no evidence that this has involved political considerations — the Irish state bought the company on the open market, as it was free to do, and it is entitled to profit from its acquisition.

But this episode demonstrates that this isn't simply a capitalistic commercial situation.

What would be entirely unremarkable if this company was owned by a Nordic sovereign wealth fund or some private billionaire looks very different when the owner is the state just down the road, which has a complex political relationship with Northern Ireland.

On January 30, Sinn Fein took Murphy out of Stormont and replaced him as minister with Caoimhe Archibald.

In March, her department admitted in a statement which made no mention of the minister that no one who lost their electricity during Storm Éowyn in January will be compensated.

After that announcement, Archibald said she didn't believe the company should have to pay compensation, claiming it could push up its cost of borrowing and so it was “not the right way to go”.

Internal contradictions

It was a curious stance for a supposedly left wing party. It also contradicted Sinn Fein's stance elsewhere on the island.

Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald herself denounced an initial refusal to compensate those in the Republic who lost power, demanding that the Taoiseach explain “what you propose to do about this… there has to be an intervention”.

Sinn Fein TD Claire Kerrane said she was “frankly stunned” at the initial refusal to compensate in the Republic.

Archibald's department is continuing to withhold key documents, including the paper on which the decision not to compensate was based. That paper was drawn up by the regulator, NIE and the department — one of which had a huge vested interest in saying no and the other of which was effectively advising itself on what to do.

In response to this newspaper's request for all material relating to that group, the department released a paltry 16 documents — several of which are no more than diary entries for meetings — but accepted that it holds “other information” which it is refusing to release. We will be appealing that decision.

The department said some of the withheld information was “incomplete”, “unfinished” or involved internal communications for which officials and ministers should have an expectation of a “safe space” to allow them to develop policy “away from public scrutiny”.

It accepted that releasing these documents would increase transparency and accountability but claimed this was outweighed by the risk of “inhibiting frankness and candour in debate and decision-making”, as well as potentially being “misleading”.

NIE said that its income was subject to “a detailed regulatory process” which meant it could vary annually based on various factors.

It stressed that “no other electricity company shareholders in the UK or Ireland have been asked to bear the cost of compensation for Storm Éowyn which was an unprecedented weather event”, with the costs instead being borne by bill-payers.

The company said it expected that the regulator would hold yet another public consultation “later this year” on the issue of compensation.

Stormont (should) make the law

However, it is Stormont, not the regulator, which must decide whether to change the law.

After this debacle, you might think that Stormont is urgently working to plug this legislative hole by bringing Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the UK. You'd be wrong, it appears.

DfE confirmed it has asked the regulator to consult again about severe weather compensation but gave no guarantee it will implement a scheme which makes compensation compulsory.

Despite what the minister said in March, the department denied that she opposed NIE voluntarily paying compensation - but did not respond when asked if that means she now believes it should pay out.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, MLAs were able to find the time to vote through another piece of legislation…a bill which is likely to see their pay increased.