4,500 police officers seek stress damage

The British government was under new pressure today to pay the huge legal bill for 4,500 Northern Ireland police officers seeking compensation for post-traumatic stress.

With the action already costing well over £1m (€1.43m), union representatives accused the authorities of trying to price them out of the High Court.

Rank and file officers have already been asked to pay £25 (€35.7) a month to fund a landmark case expected to be heard next year.

But Northern Ireland Police Federation chairman Irwin Montgomery claimed a wider duty of care to men and women exposed to unspeakable horrors over 30 years of violence had been abandoned.

He said: “We believe that they have been obstructive in this litigation in every possible way.

“Our conclusion must therefore be that this is part of an ill-intentioned strategy to make the costs of the action prohibitively high.”

Mr Montgomery told the Joint Central Committee of UK Police Federations that 70 officers had committed suicide because the pressures of working at the height of the Troubles.

Another 302 policemen and women were murdered and 10,000 injured, delegates at the conference in Edinburgh heard.

“The physical and mental damage was enormous either on officers who barely survived attacks or on others, who went along afterwards to, quite literally, pick up the dismembered pieces of colleagues,” Mr Montgomery said.

But in some cases post-traumatic stress has emerged only now, 10 years after the IRA and loyalist terrorists first announced their ceasefires.

Although officers realised they would face harrowing situations, their case against the Chief Constable is that he was negligent in preparing them to cope with the traumas or in helping them cope later.

The federation chief also claimed the British government denied it was aware officers were exposed to trauma, or that its resources for dealing with the aftermath were inadequate.

“Perhaps worst of all, they deny they knew that exposure to traumatic incidents could lead to mental disorder; yet their own doctor acknowledged this many years ago,” he said.

With the stakes now so high, the union fears its own financial resources could be on the line.

“To obtain help for our colleagues the federation has been forced to go out on a perilous financial limb,” Mr Montgomery warned.

“There is a wider public interest in this case. The obligation to look after the welfare of members also extends to government.

“Yet our experience is that when it comes to money government turns to stone.

“It is time it did the decent thing and accepted that the debt owed to the RUC was not paid by the award of the George Cross.

“The way forward is to recognise the legitimacy of our post-traumatic stress disorder group action.”