Troubles victims’ families should receive bereavement payments, advises NI commissioner

Recognition payments should be made to the relatives of people killed during the Troubles, including paramilitaries, the Northern Ireland victims’ commissioner has proposed.

The recommendation for the bereavement payments was made in an advice paper submitted to the Executive Office by the Commission for Victims and Survivors for Northern Ireland.

Writing in the foreword, the outgoing commissioner, Ian Jeffers, said he had “no doubt this paper will be contentious” and “there will be some who find it difficult to accept the idea that all bereaved families should be included, regardless of who their deceased loved one was”.

He said he “fully understand this challenge, but I do see the value of a recognition payment … in promoting reconciliation”.

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The suggestion was criticised by the DUP, which said it was “repugnant” and it could not support it.

“Many victims and survivors will be deeply disappointed that the Victims Commissioner failed to take the opportunity to make clear that there is no equivalence between victim and victim maker,” said MLA Emma Little-Pengelly.

“The lie that reconciliation somehow demands that victims and their perpetrators be treated the same must be robustly challenged,” she said, adding that the proposal caused “significant hurt to many victims”.

Kenny Donaldson, of the victims and survivors group SEFF, said any proposed payment scheme must distinguish between perpetrator and victim and called for “another approach … with appropriate arbitration functions” to be developed “for those who were bereaved of a loved one who was involved in terrorism as a member of a proscribed group.”

He said the proposals were “advice” and there was “substantive debate to be held on these issues before anything could be enacted in law”.

“Our message is simple: advance a reparation for the non-controversial cases which do not involved terrorism, a different process is required to deal with those other cases.”

According to draft calculations included in the paper, one-off payments of £10,000 to some 13,000 bereaved spouses, children, parents and siblings would cost £129 million, rising to more than £1 billion for one-off payments of £100,000. Recurrent payments of £2,000 or £5,000 made over between 10 and 30 years could cost between £258 million and £1.9 billion, it states.

[ Families of Troubles victims failed by compensation system with one man receiving just £43 ]

The paper also noted that during the Troubles, people were bereaved in Northern Ireland, the Republic, Great Britain and in mainland Europe, and recommended the scheme be applicable to all qualifying individuals, regardless of jurisdiction.

Decisions around the adoption and operation of any scheme, including eligibility and the level of payment, would be made by the UK government and Stormont and would require a functioning Executive to see the matter through.

In the foreword to the proposal, Mr Jeffers urged decision-makers to progress the matter quickly.

“It cannot, as in the case of the Troubles Permanent Disablement Payment Scheme, take more than a decade to implement,” he said. “While not all will agree with the specifics of what we recommend, it can start a discussion around the acknowledgment of those bereaved as a result of the Troubles/conflict.”

The question of whether paramilitaries who died as a result of their own actions should be included in any compensation schemes has long been highly controversial.

Proposals for dealing with the legacy of the Troubles put forward by the Consultative Group on the Past in 2009 included a payment to bereaved relatives, but faced significant criticism. Ultimately the plans were not taken forward.

People who were injured in an incident for which they were subsequently convicted are not entitled to a payment under the Troubles Permanent Disablement Payment Scheme, which opened for applications in 2021.

Jennifer Jordan, whose father, Clifford Lundy, was killed by the IRA in 1980, told the BBC she would not support a scheme that provided payments to the relatives of paramilitaries.

“It seems again it’s back to the same old story. We are taking the victim and we are equating the victim with the perpetrator, which is totally morally wrong,” she said.

Alan Bracknell, whose father, Trevor, was killed by loyalist paramilitaries in 1975, said it was “about acknowledging and saying what happened to you was wrong, and it happened to you because there was a conflict”.

He said that 25 years on from the Belfast Agreement, the question of the legacy of the Troubles has not been dealt with “and if we’re going to start to grow up in this society, we’re going to have to start to take some really hard choices” about legacy.

“I think this is a difficult choice, I think it is a choice that some people will baulk at,” he said.

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