Victims and survivors say of the Troubles pension: ‘We are not the same as terrorists who forever changed our lives’

• Noel Downey

I was a part-time member of the Ulster Defence Regiment stationed in Lisnaskea and am a victim of terrorism.

On Sunday June 10 1990 I left my house in Maguiresbridge to pick up my fiancé in Newtownbutler about 11 miles away. I decided to call at a public house in Lisnaskea to see a friend, I left the pub about two hours later and went to get into my car, and as I got halfway in a booby trap bomb made of Semtex planted under my car by the Provisional IRA exploded tossing me into my car, I was blinded and heard nothing.

Still blind but fully conscious I managed to get back out of the car and started to walk away but I kept falling down, I kept getting back up and falling down.

I couldn’t understand this, it was later I realised why – my left leg had been blown off, it had hit me on my face on the way past knocking out some of my teeth. The teeth were later recovered embedded in my leg.

As I lay on the ground covered in blood a policeman held my left hand but it wasn’t to comfort me, it was to hold my hand on.

I spent months in hospital with endless surgery, rehabilitation and learning to walk and write again. At the age of 27, I went from a fit able-bodied young lad to disabled in the couple of seconds it took a terrorist to plant a bomb under my car.

I still have nightmares and can still smell the explosives in my nostrils, not to mention the pain I’ve been living with since that day.

No terrorist must receive this pension. It’s both obscene and sick to even suggest that any terrorist could be a recipient whether they injured themselves via their own hand or not.

I am not prepared to be used any longer by politicians and others who have consistently appeased the Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein.

I expect local political parties to stand up for what is right through ensuring that terrorists are not granted a war pension – as a legitimate soldier that would hurt me and many others very badly.

The pension must go to innocents, terrorists and other perpetrators already have access to generous health and welfare services – they are not disadvantaged.

• Marion Radford

My name is Marion Radford. On August 15 1998, I went into Omagh with my 16-year-old son for our usual Saturday shopping trip into town.

I was a working single mother who provided everything that I possibly could for my children.

My son, Alan helped me every week carry shopping home.

That day destroyed my whole life, my family’s life and many others with it.

Real IRA terrorists left a 500lb car bomb outside a shop right beside the one I was in. My son had left me for a brief moment and within that time the bomb exploded.

I survived, my son did not. I suffered severe loss, loss of a child, loss of a family due to the actions of those who planned mass murder and succeeded.

I haven’t been given the right to see my son grow up, he was denied the right to life, the right to work, build a career.

Not only did Alan not get to carry on his life-long plans, I never have been able to recover from my child’s murder, nor the psychological wounds.

My physical injuries may have superficially healed, but that of my life scars never have. The carnage I witnessed has lived with me, and the carnage has filtered into every aspect of my life and that of my family from that day forward.

I cannot accept to be treated the same as those who murdered my son. They callously planned and killed him and injured me, whilst we were innocents on the street, carrying on with our lives.

I am not a terrorist, I have not taken a life. I didn’t plan for the terrorists to change my life, but they have and they have no rights equal to my rights as a bereaved mother, an injured woman caused by their actions. You reap what you sow.

Terrorists are not innocent, they are not victims.

• Mervyn Lewers

My life forever changed when I survived an under-car booby-trap bomb attack on May 22 1988, but in which I lost my left leg. I was an RUC officer and was doing my best to serve the community and to stand against the terrorism that had gripped our country. I had damaged my second leg badly and had to have it amputated also.

I moved to Canada to try and build a new life but returned to Northern Ireland around six years ago, at the end of the day it’s my home.

Three decades on since I left I would have liked to see things moved further along but little has changed. Victims are getting older yet they are still being left behind.

It is disgraceful that we are now again being used as pawns in a cruel game which appears to be controlled by the puppet master of the Provisionals. They victimised me once and they must not be allowed to succeed a second time.

The pension needs implemented without any further delay and no-one with a Troubles-related criminal conviction should get it, it would be absolutely scandalous if that was allowed. I want our political leaders to hold firm, there must be no further fudging of these issues – nothing’s left to give by me and others like me.

I’ve been without a victims’ pension from the point I was injured, would it help my life now? Yes it would, but I do not want it on the basis that terrorists receive it and no politician or political party should seek to blackmail me on this. We innocents have given enough, there’s no more to give.

• Andrea Brown

For 37 years now I have been a victim of Provisional IRA terrorism. In 1983 when I was 12-years-old my daddy an RUC sergeant was murdered. Then in 1988 I was blown up by a Provisional IRA bomb which killed six young soldiers.

So for 32 years I have not only lived with crippling injuries which have left me wheelchair-bound, I also have lived with the trauma of both these attacks.

To this day I have still not been treated for the PTSD which hampers my daily living. All this time I have watched the perpetrators of these attacks being treated like victims. This hurts innocent victims. I strive every day to be a survivor, to be what I was brought up to be; which is a decent human being.

Many of these criminals are now in our councils, Stormont, Westminster, the Dail in Dublin and they are treated like war heroes.

It is soul destroying to think that anyone who can commit these terrible acts should receive a pension from the government they fought and still fight to this day. Whether Protestant or Catholic no criminal should receive the same pension as those whose lives they have destroyed.

This pension would help my life so much as being so physically disabled is very expensive and these costs are likely to only increase as I age.

Legislation should not be changed. As much as the pension is needed I would not accept it if it was also awarded to the terrorists.

• Neil Tattersall

On December 3 1992 my life forever changed when I was caught up in a bomb, planted in the centre of Manchester by the Provisional IRA.

Has life been difficult since that day? Absolutely, my entire identity as I knew it is gone. From that day I am defined as a victim and survivor of terrorism. The trauma was really bad, my personality changed overnight, I became homeless, my relationships with work, family and friends were badly impacted, I realised some time later that I had PTSD.

I was never able to earn or build up a work-based pension, financially I have struggled. Would the pension agreed within the UK Parliament help? Of course it would, it would give me back my dignity, it’d allow me to live a little more comfortably and to take care of my mum.

But do I want it if terrorists also receive it? No I do not, there must be no fudge of what was agreed in legislation and I appeal with the DUP and other Stormont parties along with my own Westminster government, don’t betray me.

I am not the same as terrorists who forever changed my life.

I may live in Manchester, away from the centrality of the Troubles, and I haven’t lived day and daily within a climate where terrorism seeks to psychologically break people down but I know what it right and what is wrong.

I don’t want a pension if anyone who was involved in bringing pain and misery to others receives it. The Northern Ireland parties and my own government cannot fudge this issue.

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