Call for pension-style payouts for NI victims
Sufferers from the Northern Ireland conflict should receive pension-style payouts, a former victims’ commissioner said today.
Kenneth Bloomfield said the scheme had been adopted in battle-scarred Israel.
He was giving evidence recently to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee of MPs at Westminster in England.
“I think it is better not to have a once-for-all settlement in these cases,” he said.
“I am not suggesting for a moment, chairman (Patrick Cormack), that it is easy to work out such a scheme in detail, it would be a radical departure from what we have had previously.”
Many victims’ families who suffered losses dating back to the 1970s were relatively poorly compensated for trauma and financial hardship endured.
A commission is being established in the North to lobby for those affected during the 30-year Troubles, which left thousands dead and many more injured.
Mr Bloomfield told the committee last month that in Israel you could revisit and reassess the plight of someone afflicted by violence.
It could work like a disability benefit but he warned it might face difficulties in Westminster if it was radically different and more generous than that applying to the UK.
Central to his report on victims in 1998 was the need for a more effective voice and a better listening ear.
A Northern Ireland Office-appointed consultative group on the past headed by former Church of Ireland Primate Robin Eames and ex-Policing Board member Denis Bradley is to make recommendations for action.
Mr Bloomfield said he was dubious about South African-style truth and reconciliation commissions and questioned the value of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry which is probing the 1972 shooting dead of 14 civil rights protestors by British soldiers in Derry.
“If we were in a situation where the communities and the political representatives of the communities agree then it is a good thing to do, but if they do not it is a bad thing to do,” he added.
“We have had all these people killed because of the divisions in our society and we do not want any remedies which are divisive in themselves.”
A major row is brewing between Sinn Féin and other Northern Ireland Executive parties over the possible appointment of a chief victims’ commissioner.
It led to the withdrawal of the consideration stage of the Assembly’s Victims Bill, which was to be debated on Tuesday.
It is necessary because of the decision to appoint four victims’ commissioners rather than one.
It had been given an accelerated passage so that it would become law quickly.
No reason was given for the withdrawal but it is understood Sinn Féin is unhappy with a series of proposed amendments which would allow for the appointment of a chief commissioner.
