Mr. Kenny Donaldson:

No, I had a flat tyre outside Drogheda - even on your good roads.

I am representing Innocent Victims United, IVU, an umbrella organisation for 23 groups across Northern Ireland, the Republic and Great Britain which have a collective membership in excess of 11,500 individual victims and survivors. The organisation was formed in 2012 to act as a cohesive voice for these individuals and to bring together some thoughts on policy which had been lacking heretofore. The organisation’s status is voluntary. It does not receive funding; nor does it wish to receive it. The organisation has a very clear position on terrorism and violence. It stands on the solid legal and moral foundation that in the context of Northern Ireland there was not and is not a justification for the taking of life in either the advancement of or the defence of a political objective. IVU is non-sectarian and non-political, with representation from across the spectrum.

In the talks processes heretofore the terminology dealing with the past has been difficult in itself. It is society’s terminology, the terminology of those who do not want to remember and those who wish to move the situation on without dealing with the issues. Dealing with the past is dealing with the present in terms of victims’ and survivors’ issues because they are real and live and will be today and tomorrow. Everyone else needs to remember this.

"Dealing with the past" is offensive language for victims and survivors. IVU believes innocent victims and survivors of terrorism have been used as collateral damage for many years. In 1998 there was a peace agreement which brought about the Belfast Agreement. For all its pros and cons, at that point at least, a referendum was held and the people decided they wished to go with that approach.

Part of the Agreement in 1998 was the release of prisoners, when the gates were opened. Society understood they were released as terrorists on licence. If we were to think then that 17 years later that these individuals would now be considered in law as victims in the same way as those for whom they were incarcerated, we would have been told we were away in the head. That is what has happened in this society. I am conscious, however, of what Sr. Maura Twohig said about not getting into negativities. If that is what comes across from this, I am sorry, but a reality check is also needed. We need to recalibrate society because it has gone too far. A pause button needs to be used and we need to start to examine how the peace and political processes have been rolled out in the past 17 years by two national Governments.

It is our belief the definition of “victim” is at the root and heart of the difficulties in seeking resolutions of victim issues, a point that needs to be considered. In 2006, when the Victims and Survivors (Northern Ireland) Order 2006 dealing with this matter was introduced in Westminster, not a single individual in Northern Ireland had a view on it. Victims and survivors certainly did not, nor did the local political parties. It was ushered through Westminster in 24 hours. We have argued for a long time that there needs to be a referendum held on this issue. IVU has engaged with the main church leaders, political parties, the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Orange Order and a plethora of other organisations. We want a debate on this issue to have the matter resolved once and for all.

We recognise that people who came from terrorist backgrounds and their families have suffered. If one loses a loved one, be they a member of a terrorist organisation or otherwise, the loss is the same. The point is that providing services and a legal equation for those individuals is not right. There are health-based and welfare services. For the citizens of any nation, there is an entitlement to be in receipt of these. However, we have to be conscious of what message we have sent when all are considered to be victims.

We are in Dublin today and I would not miss the opportunity to bring the following issues to the fore because we have been working on them for some time. It is the belief of those based in borderland areas that the Republic of Ireland, the State and its Administration, have issues to answer for over the course of the Troubles. We have been engaged on this isue for some three to four years. We have met the Taoiseach and other senior policy people on the need for a formal acknowledgment of failures on the part of the State during the years of the Troubles. I am talking explicitly about security and extradition policies. There needs to be a formal acknowledgment of the arms crisis of 1970, the formation of the IRA, the financing, training and the procuring of weaponry. These issues have not been dealt with satisfactorily, neither have failures in terms of extradition polices at judicial level which led to shoot and scoot or hit and run killings across the Border. The area in which I am based and work is south Fermanagh. The statistics are available and there is no need to exaggerate or embellish them. In south-east Fermanagh, in five small wards, 42 lives were lost during the Troubles. Of these, 38 were murders committed by the Provisional IRA, PIRA. Two innocent Roman Catholic civilians were stabbed to death by soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders regiment. Two IRA members died, as they term it, on active service. Where was the conflict in south Fermanagh? There was no conflict. It was one-way traffic. There are other parts of the country where that also was the case. Whenever we talk about the language used of it being a conflict in Northern Ireland, it must be remembered the situation in these Border areas was very different.

We also feel there needs to be recognition of the ethnic cleansing of areas. This term is not liked by some as it was used in the Balkans. However, in reality, that is what happened in areas of Fermanagh, Tyrone and south Armagh. It might have been on a much lesser scale, but it happened. For the individuals involved, there has never been redress.

To coin the comments of one individual, a part-time UDR soldier who had been shot up twice on his farm and forced to leave with three young children, "The IRA did not take my life but they took my way of life", because having come from a farming family of 11 generations, overnight he became a townie. I say that with the greatest of respect to those members who live in a town centre or city environment. However, he had no choice and became a city boy overnight.

I will move to the area of reparations and, obviously, the issue of a pension for the injured, which had been part of the Stormont House discussions, is foremost in discussions at present. Ms Sandra Peake and her organisation have done sterling work over the years in bringing this issue to the fore. This issue again is a symptom of why we have got it wrong in respect of victims policy because they are being asked two questions on this particular matter. First, they are asked whether they would benefit from receiving a pension, whether it would benefit their lives and whether it would make things easier. The answer given, of course, is "Yes". The second question they are asked is whether they will accept this pension if ten individuals, six loyalist and four republican who have themselves been seriously injured while carrying out acts of terror, also receive it. Why should a victim survivor be asked that question? Again, it is a negation of government not to deal with that matter properly, and 390 people have been prevented from receiving much-needed support. We have raised this in recent weeks and, believe it or not, the actual item they need more than anything else, which everyone around this table would take for granted, is oil. This is because with the physical injuries they have endured, for pain relief purposes oil is an absolute necessity, that is, having it on full-time and making sure that keeps their pain at bay. Is it not ironic that while those individuals require oil, there are criminal empires across this island comprising those who have made wealth on the back of oil? These individuals have the oil while victims need oil.

As for reparations, it is not only about finance but also about acknowledgement and accountability, and other sectors of people must also be considered after the discussions that will take place concerning the seriously injured. Obviously, these are the immediately bereaved, the next of kin, who in many instances received extremely poor compensation at the time when their loved ones were murdered and who often were obliged to bring up children in one-parent families and who I must say made a fantastic job of it in the main. These people are the heroes in this society. As for those displaced and ethnically cleansed to whom I already referred, farms lie in rack and ruin and houses are dilapidated and falling apart. Again, where was the help for those individuals? It did not come. I acknowledge this is slightly outside members' brief, but where there is potential for the joint committee, I urge it to make representations on behalf of those who are victims of Gadaffi terrorism or para-terrorism. That matter still has not been resolved for those citizens who have been affected in that way and who, unlike those in other nations of the world, have not been compensated. Again, I ask the committee to please take an interest in that matter.

Another issue that is greatly to our heart and hopefully to that of the committee is equitable services for victims and survivors or, as we dub it, "end the postcode discrimination". We have strong links with victims and survivors based in the Republic of Ireland as well as in Great Britain. At present, the Victims and Survivors Service operates services on behalf of individual victims and survivors. However, if one was injured in an atrocity in the Republic of Ireland, be it the Dublin-Monaghan bombings, Belturbet or elsewhere, at present one has no gateway ability to receive support via those schemes. The criterion used for the support for the injured scheme is to be in receipt of the high-level or middle rate disability living allowance, DLA, and that is one's passport to receive support. There is no comparable benefit in the Republic of Ireland which is recognised as such for people to receive that support. We have written to the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection and other senior politicians on this matter but, again, it has not yet been resolved. Consequently, in looking after their own citizens on this side of the Border, members of the joint committee should make that a matter of urgency because at present they are not being catered for and that is not right. I do not like to do this but bringing that down to financial terms, it means that were someone in receipt of high-rate DLA care component for a serious injury, £1,500 worth of support could go to that individual. Such people then automatically have a passport for £820 of financial assistance, as well as £500 for their carers who would be assisting them. That is £2,820 that could go into a family household annually and, at present, citizens in this jurisdiction are denied that.

As I am conscious my time may be drawing to a close, I will mention in bullet-point format other areas on which we wish to touch. We are clear there must not be and should not be any amnesty for terrorists or the expunging of records. Moreover, in our view a truth commission and the independent commission on information retrieval, ICIR, which is contained within the Stormont House proposals, will deliver little for victims of terrorism. We also make the point that while we call it the Stormont House Agreement, how can it be an agreement when only two of those five political parties which comprised the then Executive have ratified those proposals within their own party structures? Moreover, one of those two parties has since reneged in terms of welfare reform. Consequently, the smallest political party in the Executive, namely, the Alliance Party, is the only party that has ratified the proposals but yet they are advancing apace. Does that not seem strange? We wish to bring to the fore that this agreement, as it has been dubbed, was done in spite of victims and survivors. In the case of the Haass proposals, for all their flaws there was an open door ability to lobby and to speak to politicians and political parties in the run-up to those discussions. Stormont House was a closed doors affair and this was for a reason. The difference between the widths of the document for Stormont House and the document for the Haass proposals, where almost too much of a hand was shown, would tell one something.

The other area about which I wish to speak briefly today is the proposed historical investigations unit, which is contained within that document, and obviously there are issues pertaining to disclosure. We have raised this a number of times and our concern is there is a different level of disclosure commitment by the UK Government and by the Republic of Ireland Administration. The UK Government has committed to full disclosure, the ROI State has committed to disclosure with co-operation. These two are very different and we have taken legal advice on this and have been advised that there is a marked difference. At this stage, I should make the point there almost has been a test case in this regard to try, if one likes, to win the contentment and support of the community from which I come, namely, Kingsmills. We saw the foot dragging that has existed over Kingsmills in terms of the provision of information. Latterly, 90 pages of documentation have been produced of which 60 to 62 pages were newspaper reports. Consequently we ask whether there really is real commitment from this side of the Border to deal with these issues. We make this point plainly. I may be a citizen of the United Kingdom, but neither State is clean on this problem we have in this place. The ROI State needs to get its head out of the sand and deal with those matters also.

We also ask members to factor into their thinking in the future the issue of the retraumatisation of victims and survivors through the glorification of terrorism. Again, we make the point that when individual members of one's family lose their lives, regardless of whoever they were or of whatever organisation they were part, one will grieve for them and will honour them in one's own private way. As for these public showings of terrorism idolatry, however, what are they doing for this society? I refer to six, seven or eight year old children being brought to these events and being told these are, somehow, martyrs and heroes. The people who did not take to the gun or the bomb are the heroes within this society and we need to remember that.

Innocent Victims United asks that the Governments responsible for stewardship of the peace and political processes recommit themselves to the principles of justice, truth and accountability and that they will, without fear or favour, support the innocent victims and survivors of terrorism and other Troubles related violence in their quest to obtain answers. Society must be embedded with a mindset about when one neighbour wrongs another, and this is because we did not do it to strangers. We were neighbours together. The point is, if one comes from a Nationalist-republican perspective, one believes all people living on this island are Irish and if one comes from a British perspective and one lives in Northern Ireland, then one considers all one's neighbours to be British and, therefore, one actually murdered one's neighbours.

That is what happened here: people murdered their neighbours, not strangers. We feel society must adopt the mindset that when one neighbour wrongs another that they are required to engage in a process of three Rs: demonstrate remorse, show repentance and engage in restitutive acts. Maybe once these processes have been worked through we can get to individual and societal reconciliation, and not the phony reconciliation we have currently.