Concerns that eligibility row is blocking Troubles pension

Applications for the new Victims’ Payment Scheme were due to commence next week (May 29), however, this has now been delayed indefinitely amidst a row over whether London or Stormont will pay the £100 million required.

Ulster Unionist MLA Mr Beattie, who is the vice-chair of the executive office (TEO) committee, said the fact that the necessary “scaffolding and supports” had not been put in place, and that no Stormont department had been appointed to administer the scheme, suggested the row over eligibility criteria had been rumbling on in the background hindering progress. In January this year, the then secretary of state Julian Smith signed regulations into law that will provide a pension-like payment of between £2,000 and £10,000 per year to the most severely injured survivors of terrorism.

While Sinn Fein has consistently said that all of the seriously injured must be eligible to apply – including those maimed by their own bombs – DUP leader Arlene Foster and others have argued that government money should “not be awarded to victim makers”.

With Sinn Fein dismissing the legislation’s “no fault of their own” clause as creating a “hierarchy of victims,” it has taken several years to have the controversial scheme ready for implementing.

“Some of the questions now have to be around when this legislation will be enacted. Is there unity within the Executive on this issue or has Sinn Fein, who hold the purse strings, made it clear they will contribute nothing to the scheme because they did not get their way in respect of perpetrators not getting a payment?” Mr Beattie said.

“While I believe the UK Government should pay a large proportion of the budget towards the Victims’ Payment Scheme I also believe that Northern Ireland must also pay its way. But if this scheme is being stalled due to politicking within The Executive Office then let’s get that out in the open.”

A UK Govermnent spokesperson said the government had fulfilled its legal obligation in January when it legislated for the scheme, and added: “The Northern Ireland Executive committed to ‘finding a way forward’ on this issue in 2014 and should now put aside its differences to deliver for victims.

“As this is a devolved matter, funding for the scheme should come from the Executive’s block grant.”

TUV leader Jim Allister said: “As if the innocent victims of terrorism haven’t suffered enough, we now have the crushing delay in their long overdue pension caused by the nigh unbelievable failure to nail down financial responsibility between Stormont and Westminster.

“Clearly this issue required to be resolved in the New Decade New Approach negotiations. But such was the blind rush to government that the subject was ignored and the leverage squandered.”

Mr Allister added: “Failing to resolve funding for this most poignant of issues was a shocking neglect, bringing more traumatisation for those cruelly made victims in the first place.”

• Key figures in the row of the failure to implement the Northern Ireland Troubles pension have been defending their positions in a series of media interviews.

The Victims Payment Scheme for the seriously injured was due to open to applications on May 29, however, it has now been delayed with the latest dispute centring on who will pay the £100m cost.

Alan McBride of the WAVE Injured Group, who lost his wife and father-in-law in the IRA’s 1993 Shankill bombing, is considering a legal action in an effort to have the scheme implemented.

“It’s shameful that some of the most vulnerable in society still have to fight for what’s right but fight they will through the courts if necessary,” Mr McBride said.

Speaking on the BBC The View programme on Thursday night, NI Secretary Brandon Lewis said the full cost should be met from the “huge amount of money” contained in Treasury’s block grant to Northern Ireland.

“They (NI Executive) have to make decisions how they allocate that budget,” Mr Lewis added.

On the same programme, the NI victims’ commissioner Judith Thompson said the row over who pays for the scheme was “quite literally adding insult to injury”.

During a BBC Radio Foyle Interview yesterday morning, Sinn Fein president Mary Lou McDonald suggested there “has been game-playing in an attempt to be divisive on an agenda that ought to unite all of us,” and that there should be “no hierarchy of pain or victim”.

At the daily Stormont press briefing yesterday, first minister Arlene Foster said: “We are committed to delivering this pension...and therefore the department will be designated in the very near future. But we do have to deal with the funding”.