It’s dejá vu all over again with the recommendation this week by outgoing Commissioner for Victims and Survivors (CVSNI), Ian Jeffers, that a recognition payment be made by government to bereaved families who lost a loved one during the conflict.
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The recommendation is made in advice submitted to the Executive Office by the CVSNI as part of a consultation on a 10-year strategy for victims and survivors currently underway within the Executive Office and due to conclude in March this year. Where that strategy will go in the absence of an Executive at Stormont is anyone’s guess.
Likewise, it remains to be seen whether and indeed when Ian Jeffers will be replaced as victims’ commissioner. He has left to fill the role of CEO at Co-operation Ireland left vacant by the appointment of Peter Sheridan to head up investigations in the Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery established under the British government’s legacy legislation. The post was left vacant for 18 months from August 2020 until February 2022 in a move criticised widely by victims’ campaigners.
It is estimated that around 13,000 people could benefit from such an initiative if it were put into place and if it were to apply to all those bereaved, regardless of the circumstances of the death of their loved ones.
I was Commissioner for Victims and Survivors in 2009 when a proposal was made by the Consultative Group on the Past, chaired by Denis Bradley and Archbishop Robin Eames, that a payment of £12,000 be made to each family bereaved as a result of the conflict.
In the days that followed, numerous phone calls and emails came into the to the Commission’s office from bereaved relatives asking how did they go about applying for this payment. There were also some people who contacted the office to complain that the Victims’ Commission supported the recommendation as, in their words, “it is equating innocent victims with terrorists”. Most of those in the latter category had not been bereaved themselves.
Ian Jeffers has acknowledged that, almost 15 years on, his recommendation will still be contentious for that same reason but that it was his belief that a recognition payment had value in terms of promoting reconciliation. I don’t agree.
For me, the reason to support such a payment is two-fold. The first is to try and make a measure of reparation to those who have been bereaved and to acknowledge the loss they have suffered. The second is to redress the significant historical inequity in the payment of compensation to those who were bereaved as a result of the conflict.
I will never forget one woman I met during my time as Victims’ Commissioner telling me that on the day she attended court for compensation to be decided in the case of her murdered husband, the judge told her she was a fine-looking young woman who was not burdened by children so she’d have no problem finding another man to take care of her and awarded her £500.
For me, the reason to support such a payment is two-fold. The first is to try and make a measure of reparation to those who have been bereaved and to acknowledge the loss they have suffered. The second is to redress the significant historical inequity in the payment of compensation to those who were bereaved as a result of the conflict
These sorts of accounts feature all too frequently in the research published by QUB in September, “More than a number: Reparations for those Bereaved during the Troubles” by Luke Moffett and Kevin Hearty. It also recommended the establishment of a bereavement payment scheme.
In 2003, the Irish government’s Remembrance Commission made acknowledgement payments of €15,000 to bereaved families of victims resident in the 26 counties at the time of their death, so the concept is not without precedent.
The problem, however, is Ian Jeffers is leaving his post and there will be no-one to champion the case for the recognition payments when he is gone. Likewise, the mandate of the Consultative Group on the Past ended with the production of their report and recommendations and there was no clear implementation plan.
It is frustrating and upsetting in equal measure that those professing outrage on the airwaves at such a proposal seem to not care that the hopes of victims and survivors that something will finally be done to acknowledge and make reparation for their loss have, yet again, been raised only to be cruelly dashed once again.
That cycle has to end.
