: Latest News

The delay in the opening of the Troubles Permanent Disablement Payment Scheme is inexcusable and unforgivable.

After decades of campaigning for their right to redress, and with the promise of compensation secured, justice has been cruelly denied to victims and survivors of the Troubles. Those people now face an anxious wait to access funds and services. The urgent need for action is compounded by many survivors of the Troubles being elderly or in ill health.

It is entirely unacceptable that victims be forced to wait any longer while politics once again holds up the process.

The moral duty to compensate victims was signalled when the House of Commons agreed, without a vote, to the regulations establishing the fund. The responsibility now lies with the Northern Ireland Executive to begin payments as a matter of the utmost urgency.

That recompense is an important piece of the reconciliation process. Any further delay will not only continue the suffering of victims but could well sew further seeds of distrust in the ability of the political process to resolve such issues and deliver on the needs of local people.

Stormont is only just back up and running after a too long hiatus.  I know that local people are fed up of excuse and process they want to see delivery and action.

The current situation may be a ‘win’ for those who put political goals above all else.  It is in fact a failure to deliver mature public service and duty.  I do not believe the people of Northern Ireland should, or will, put up with such selfishness.

I expect (as do the cross party members of the House of Commons NI Select Committee) all parties to do all in their power to do right by victims immediately.

Click here to view article

A survivor of the PIRA’s La Mon atrocity 43 years ago has given a vivid and heart-rending account of the terrorist attack that left 12 people dead and 30 injured.

Billy McDowell and his wife, Lilly, were attending an Irish Collie Club Dinner when the incendiary bomb exploded.

Billy is supporting the Ulster Human Rights Watch (UHRW) and ‘News Letter’ campaign to get the Victims’ Payment Scheme introduced without further delay.

After the explosion, Billy said there was absolute panic as people tried to escape from the building that was engulfed in flames.

“I was swept outside by the escaping guests and realised that Lilly was still inside,” he said.

“The building was an inferno and no one would let me back in to search for Lilly. Sometime later, Joe Paxton appeared, carrying Lilly in his arms.

“She was almost naked and had horrific injuries, having been badly burnt. Someone wrapped a curtain round her and a stranger offered to take us to the Ulster Hospital as the ambulances had not arrived yet.”

Billy had a four-week stay in hospital where he had skin grafts for burns to my face, legs, arms and thigh.

Lilly was more severely injured.

Billy recalls: “Initially, it was uncertain if she would survive due to her burns and smoke inhalation. It was weeks before our children could visit.

“I could often hear her cry out in the next ward when getting the dressings changed or re-living the nightmare.”

Their youngest son was nine and he regularly cared for his mother when Billy was working shifts in the Northern Ireland Prison Service.

“This included changing medical dressings, applying ointment to burns and helping her into a two-piece, skin-tight suit especially designed for the treatment of severe burns.”

Lilly’s nightmares never left her and my son would often find her believing she was back in that burning room, crying and upset.

“In 2013, Lilly passed away but she believed that the Lord saved her that night and it was her faith that helped her through. I believe she was right.”

Decades after the La Mon atrocity, Billy is scathing of the role of politicians as victims continue to wait for payments.

“I think it’s disgusting the way we have been kicked around with the politicians. One tells you one thing, and another tells you another.

“I’m just as bitter now as I was 43 years ago….

“Lilly, being the Christian, she had a different view on it than I have, but I had no time for the politicians because of the way they treated us.”

Click here to view article

The wife of a former RUC officer who was shot in the head in an IRA ambush forty-one years ago is considering legal action over the delayed Victims’ Payment Scheme.

Rosemary Craig’s husband, Jim, and a colleague, attended a hoax burglary call when an IRA unit opened fire. He sustained two gunshot wounds to the head and was off work for a year as he underwent a painful recovery which included learning to walk and talk again.

An emotional Rosemary said: “My husband got a life sentence when he was shot in 1979, and I think it’s appalling to make anybody suffer the way the victims have suffered in Northern Ireland.

“I think it’s time that the MLAs and the Government got up from sitting on their posterior and did something about it.”

Both Jim and Rosemary don’t intend to let matters rest, as Rosemary explains: “I have instructed solicitors to take this matter forward on behalf of my husband because I think it’s absolutely disgraceful.

“I think that the Govt of Northern Ireland should hang their heads in shame. We have enough solicitors and barristers in that Government to know exactly how to take this matter forward.

“It is a matter for Westminster, in my submission, because it was there where the legislation was laid in the first instance.”

Jim vividly recalls the ambush and how the use of one of the first armoured Land Rover’s had saved his life and that of his colleague. He believes that what happened to him and thousands of other victims of terrorism is a chapter of history few want to remember.

Jim puts it like this: “We’re forgotten. We’re brushed under the carpet. They don’t want to remember victims whether it’s the likes of me as a police officer or former soldiers or civilians caught up in things. They don’t want to remember because this brings the whole thing back. This is the face that they don’t want to know.”

Jim isn’t holding his breath waiting for the scheme to be implemented. Too many false dawns have led him to be temper expectations.

“Whenever it comes into law and whenever its paid, that’s the first time I will accept that they are actually doing something.

“I know what Government are like: they promise you the earth on one side, and they do absolutely nothing on the other.

“For the likes of Boris Johnson as the Prime Minister, to turn around and say that ‘Oh this is disgusting’, well, if it’s disgusting, do something about it. You’re the guy in the big picture, you do it.

“If I didn’t do my job as a police officer, I would have been out of office. I’d have been thrown out and I think the same thing should apply to politicians who don’t do their job. Do your job, that’s all we’re asking. That’s what you’re paid to do.”