ВЈ12,000 payout for Northern Ireland Victims Families?

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Why When How

I'm not happy about it, I'd prefer to see the money ploughed into health or education

Also you notice so many of the people that have answered here are living in the past. I only like to visit it, Im not interested in living there. Move on people.

agooddub

I would have nothing to do with it. To prove that you are eligible, you will have to disclose a lot of facts about your deceased loved ones and information about all the current family members and God knows what other information.
Then it will all be stored on a British Government data base for their MI5 and MI6 agents to scrutinize.
It is too cheap a price for to TELL ALL about your dead Family Members, regardless of what side of the divide you are on.
Tell them to Shove It.

robertc50

keep watching the news protests are taking place now ,
terror groups and the membership of same at anytime should be banned from receiving same,they took up the gun of there own free will and should not be paided for it,brussels has a lot to answer for with there so called human rights .pratts

Doc

Although I appreciate the intent for which the money is being offered, I question the wisdom of it; it mostly seems to have brought up old wounds which had begun healing, or which had metaphorically scabbed over. The furious reactions on both sides today at the release of the report seems to me to show that it's probably better for the Government to simply apologize as sincerely as possible, to make the cultural and political changes (as it has tried to do since 1998) that ensure cross-cultural harmony, and not to expect that simply giving money to the victims' families all these years later will make the problem diminish or disappear.

Here in the United States, the racism problem is far from over; but interracial relations are much better here and now than they were when the Troubles were part of daily life in the North. I believe that time and active attention to changing cultural attitudes will be the only true solutions to the harm caused to so many on both sides during the Troubles years, similarly to American problems with racial tension.

SeanyA

I heard something about that on Radio 2 earlier and apparently a lot of victims families are saying that they don't want the money, which is fair enough. If it was me, I'm not too sure I would want it either.

But no, I don't think that the families of any terrorists (on either side, for the avoidance of doubt) should be offered this.

Eddie F

Orla C kinda says it all...

Nobody wants to look back, everybody is moving forward with peace as the main goal. After generations of bloodshed and violence, I for one do not wish to name call and point fingers at anybody... Let sleeping dogs lie..

Your question: What do I think of 12k being offered??

Answer: I would put more than 12k value on my cat!! No amount of money will ever replace a loved one..

I Say, Old Chap!

I can't help feeling a bit confused as to why this money is being offered now?

I agree with the points made by Eddie F, Doc, agooddub, Seany A - No amount of money is ever going to chage the fact that a loved one is gone forever.

Maybe the money could instead be put into a fund to further forge the vastly improving cross community relations in NI, and ensure that a repeat of the 70's is never seen again.

Tap

greenorlagh - While I do take your point that there was some kind of campaign against Protestants in Ireland, and I do agree it was totally wrong, you must realize that England and Oliver Cromwell in Particular tried to destroy the Catholic Church completely. He ordered the murders of numerous Priests, Nuns anyone involved with the church where not spared, the English who the vast majority where Protestant have always tried to put the Catholic majority in Ireland, down to 2nd class citizens ever since they occupied the island over 800 years ago, the reason im saying all this is because its just the reason why I think campaigns and discriminations (I don't think i would call them pograms) would have happened against Protestants in Ireland.

greenorlagh

Those that took up the gun should not get a penny. Nor should the families. That may sound heartless but its the only way forward. What exactly is a victim after all?

Orla C - maybe you don't know your history but the Republic did have a state run progrom against those of a Protestand faith a long time ago - why do you think the protestant minority is such a minority? If they did the same things today it wold be classed as genocide.

Sean

What Orla C said.

Doc's right, in that this brought up old wounds. The thing is, all these ppl want now is an apology, which Britain has never given. Some republican terrorists have apolgised, and I know because I've watched them apologise on TV (maybe loyalists have too, I don't know). That doesn't cure the hurt they caused, but nothing will.

So paying someone ВЈ12K without one word of apology is hurtful and clears nothing up.

alan m

Its amazing that a member of a terrorist group like the IRA can be given money. Should be the other way around. In the region of 2000000 pounds.

ОґПЋОґОµОєО±

I think its a distraction ....ie they will drop this soon and then everybody will be only too glad to accept the rest.

Orla C

Well, I would hope so.

The IRA were not the only bad guys in the equation, you know. There were some pretty nasty hardline Unionists as well, whose families are set to benefit, and those were just as nasty if not worse than IRA terrorists. I don't suppose you've heard of the Dublin bombings of the early 1970s? That wasn't the IRA ....

Remember, the IRA only came back into power because they got support from people who were being bullied in the worst possible way, denied jobs or services simply because they went to a different church. In a way, the Stormont government made it possible for this to happen, so in a way they only have themselves to blame. If you treat people badly, they are only going to react badly.

I hope, sincerely hope, that the world in general realises that this is changing, and that everyone wants to move on from this. The thing is, the issue in Northern Ireland started out because people from Catholic backgrounds were being discriminated against, but at the same time Protestants living in the Republic of Ireland did NOT AND DO NOT get the same kind of discrimination, despite being a minority. There are more important things to be going on with than the church you go to, or your politics. Anyone who doesn't believe me, go to Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and go into the Protestant churches there and ask.

Englishman

Surely it is time this was all forgotten. There are many better causes for this money. Is it not time north and south were one.

PinHead

The families of the terrorists are victims too

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