NL/445

The NIO's compensation 'police' have sunk to bizarre levels of insensitivity towards victims

COMPENSATION PAYMENTS FOR victims of terrorist atrocities in Northern Ireland have long been a much disputed arena and, sadly, it seems that after three decades of enormous pain and suffering for the innocent, faceless civil servants investigating claims and dispensing Government money are still working to a totally uncaring bureaucratic agenda.
Weekend revelations about the humiliating treatment accorded by Northern Ireland Office representatives to surviving victims of the Real IRA bombing in Omagh on August 15, 1998, deserve a full explanation.
Indeed, an apology should be forthcoming from Secretary of State Dr John Reid, and Prime Minister Tony Blair, who promised so much at the time but who has signally failed to deliver on his pledge that "no stone would be left unturned" in the investigation to bring to book those responsible.
Mrs Rosemary Ingram, after sustaining serious shrapnel wounds to her leg, back and shoulder from the bomb, had then to face further torment and distress from a panel of six NIO-appointed lawyers, three of whom were men, assigned to a personal body check to determine the full extent of her injuries.
Why was there any need for Mrs Ingram to be examined by lawyers when there were full medical reports available on her injuries?
It is a terrible indictment of the penny-pinching guidelines of the Northern Ireland Office's criminal injury department that authorised agents are using such degrading tactics in a bid to peg the level of Government compensation amounts to innocent victims of the most horrendous atrocity of the Troubles.
The compensation "police" on the NIO's payroll also went to quite bizarre lengths in demanding receipts for the clothes that had been blown off victims or which had been damaged in the explosion. School-exam results were closely examined by lawyers to calculate lost-earnings potential of the teenage victims.
The bottom line, tragically, was that parents of children killed in the Omagh bombing received only a token £7,500 payment as an "acknowledgement" of their pain and suffering.
The compensation amounts may have risen from the insulting payment of £63 from the Government to parents who lost a child in the IRA bombing at Claudy 30 years ago, but, in relative terms, the cold-hearted, scrooge mentality is still in vogue with those in positions of authority at the Northern Ireland Office when applications are made for compensation from innocent victims.
When the IRA and loyalist terrorist prisoners were released from jail several years ago under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, they each received substantial Government payments to allow them to re-establish themselves in society.
Some of those prisoners were hardened killers convicted of the most heinous crimes,yet they were given sympathetic and overly generous treatment by a Government falling over itself to cosy up to the paramilitaries and their political associates.
Successive Westminster governments, Labour and Conservative, have an appalling record on the treatment of innocent victims of terrorism in Northern Ireland over the 30 years of the Troubles.
When compared to the offers of £1 million to families affected by the Potters Bar rail crash in London in May, and the millions of dollars of compensation being set aside for the victims of the September 11 atrocities in the US, the payments here are totally derisory and a scandalous dereliction of the Government's duty to peaceable citizens killed or injured in an unlawful terrorist act.
IT WAS DISTRESSING TO LEARN yesterday of the destruction by fire of the roadside memorial to eight soldiers murdered by an IRA bomb on the Ballygawley-Omagh Road in August,1988.
The wilful sectarian arson attack was, as West Tyrone DUP Assembly member Oliver Gibson rightly pointed out, not just an assault on the British Army, but a vicious strike at the law-abiding community, Protestant and Roman Catholic, in the Omagh area.
The ghouls who committed this terrible sacrilege have no place in decent society and should be ostracised by all those who seek a peaceful and stable Northern Ireland.