NL/625

Agency adds insult to injury with paltry offers

THROUGHOUT the history of the Troubles, the issue of compensation for the innocent victims of violence has been a constant source of dissatisfaction.
Of course, no amount of money will ever compensate for the loss of a loved one, so putting a figure on a "fair and reasonable" settlement, as the Compensation Agency promises to do, is always going to be fraught with difficulties.
Seven years after the Omagh bomb, the single worst terrorist atrocity of the past 35 years, the families of the dead and injured are still fighting legal battles to secure fair settlements.
While those involved on the Government side are no doubt sympathetic, at the end of the day they deal in pounds and pence only and within guidelines which often leave the bereaved feeling further hurt by the pitiful amounts awarded.
Lorraine Wilson was a teenager who died helping others as a volunteer in Omagh's Oxfam shop. She had all the potential of youth and her whole life ahead of her. To the Compensation Agency, that life was worth just £7,500.
In the early years of the Troubles the compensation was even poorer, with the widows of murdered members of the security forces being left to live on a pittance - a wrong which, in the case of the UDR particularly, has yet to be righted.
The Government attitude towards the innocent, who it expects to stand in line, cap in hand, to receive as little as possible of what is rightfully theirs, contrasts sharply with its willingness to facilitate - financially, physically and politically - the murderers of the IRA and their Sinn Fein apologists.