Carers Week: Wife of injured loyalist bomb victim in RoI says it would be ‘unfair’ to exclude them from Troubles pension scheme

The wife of a man hurt in a loyalist bombing near the border has said it is “lovely” to see carers being recognised during “Carers Week” – but that what they would really like is access to a Troubles victims’ pension.
By Adam Kula
Published 13th Jun 2020, 10:30 BST
Updated 13th Jun 2020, 11:03 BST
Anthony and Marie O’Reilly got married in 1970, but their lives were thrown into turmoil by a loyalist bombing of an Irish village in 1972Anthony and Marie O’Reilly got married in 1970, but their lives were thrown into turmoil by a loyalist bombing of an Irish village in 1972
Anthony and Marie O’Reilly got married in 1970, but their lives were thrown into turmoil by a loyalist bombing of an Irish village in 1972

Marie O’Reilly was speaking to the News Letter yesterday as “Carers Week” began drawing to a close.

It is an annual campaign – promoted by Carers UK – which designates June 8 to 14 as a time to “highlight the challenges unpaid carers face and recognise the contribution they make to families and communities”.

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It has seen a number of TV and radio programmes devoted to the theme of caring, and on Thursday The Queen spoke live to a group of UK carers in what the BBC dubbed “her first ever official video conference call”.

Mrs O’Reilly, now aged 69 and living just a short distance over the Fermanagh border with husband Anthony, had been married to him only a couple of years when, on December 28, 1972, a car bomb in the tiny border village of Belturbet in the Republic of Ireland was detonated.

It killed teenagers Patrick Stanley and Geraldine O’Reilly – Anthony’s sister.

Marie said that her husband suffered “lots of scratches” but avoided being more seriously wounded. However, it was not the physical scarring which came to dominate their lives.

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“These other people who are caring for ones with physical illness, I feel kind of: Gosh, I don’t have to do that,” she said.

“But it was living with him mentally. He suffered a lot of depression and actually a personality change.

“It led him to start to drink and he became an alcoholic, and through that then he developed diabetes, lost the sight in an eye. But he got help 20 years ago and hasn’t had a drink since – he’s a lot better now.

“But it’s like living with somebody who wasn’t the same person when you knew them in the beginning, you know?”

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She said “there isn’t really a lot of support” for carers, adding that they save the government significant amounts of money by acting as an alternative to relatives being taken into state care.

She said of Carers Week that “it’s great it’s been highlighted because a lot of people suffer in silence... I think it’s lovely”.

She said even though she is not technically in the “six counties” she still feels “we’re in Northern Ireland” – and the bombers “came across from the north”.

As such, she said “it feels very discriminatory” and “unfair” not to extend the mooted Troubles pension to her family.

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