Ann Travers: We must get legacy right '“ this may be our last chance

Ann Travers also said that, given the now-lengthy passage of time since so many of the attacks, the current exercise may be the final opportunity they will get.

The 49-year-old, now living in Dublin, was speaking after what she described as a “very passionate meeting” on Monday night at Stormont, when victims aired their disappointment and anger at the current set of blueprints now out to consultation.

Ms Travers, whose schoolteacher sister Mary was shot dead by the IRA in Belfast in 1984 after leaving Mass, said: “People are very frustrated with how badly victims have been left, and for how long.

“I think really the message we’re really trying to get out was that the [Stormont House] document isn’t good enough.”

She said it was “quite clearly wrong” that, under the proposed plans, people whose cases had already been reviewed by the defunct HET will not be entitled to an investigation by the HIU.

She also said that the plans now being consulted on say nothing about victims in mainland UK, the Republic of Ireland, or continental Europe. It also pledges investigations only in the case of fatalities, not those who have been maimed.

“I really hope everybody that was there will fill out responses to the consultation document, and will write their feelings down,” she said.

“And let the NIO know precisely what they want.

“This may be our last chance of doing this. So we want to make sure our voices are heard in it.

“I just feel we’re all getting older. It’s 20 years now since the Belfast Agreement. My sister was murdered in 1984. There were people there [at the meeting] who lost loved ones in the early 1970s.

“We need to really do this properly. There is a risk that if we don’t do it properly that discontentment will sort of bubble over and out, and we’ll just keep going round in circles.

“The NIO, politicians, they really need to listen. They need not just carry on blindly and they need to consult the victims. This needs to be got right.”

Also at the meeting was John Sproule, a 54-year-old van driver from Castlederg, who said: “That Stormont House Agreement has nothing for a victim at all.”

Whilst everybody at the meeting on Monday had their own agenda, one thing was clear – “nobody was happy with it”.