Ms Sandra Peake:

I will go back to Deputy Smith's question and the issue of practical needs. To give an example, I worked this week with people who were injured and who had very old artificial limbs. I nursed in the Royal Victoria Hospital in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s, we had many people who had amputations following bombings or shootings. As surgery and technology progressed, more people in the 1990s were paralysed. People are dealing with limbs that should have been upgraded some time ago, resulting in chronic pain and its associated difficulties. Part of the difficulty with our health service has been that some of those people had not been reviewed for a long period and there is no assistance for those who may need more specialised wheelchairs to lift them, for example, to a certain kitchen cupboard height so that they can have full independence. We are pushing at the victims' and survivors' service to reinstate mechanisms to support people so that they can have the very best equipment to meet their needs and to allow them to remain independent and secure. Injured people's fears are about ending up in nursing care and being unable to live independently. It is a particular concern.

The other issue Mr. Donaldson raised when we were talking about the injured related to pensions. Legal definitions are for law makers, not victims. Putting that burden on victims and survivors is not something we would want to see. What cannot be allowed to happen is that this is viewed as too difficult, with the result that it is not addressed at all, because that would be unjust, immoral and unfair to people. There must be a way to resolve this and we have to find it.

Deputy Ferris raised the issue of truth and reconciliation. My concern is that due to the inadequacies of investigations, some families at this stage would not welcome that. That is the difficulty when we talk about this process. There is not even agreement within families about how this could be addressed, never mind within our wider society. One family may want to go down a very clear prosecution route, while others want information. Some will say it is too difficult to deal with and that they want to close this off and support their families. There are huge variations. My concern about the Stormont House Agreement is that we must get it right. It needs to be actioned, and people have been waiting 17 years for it. People are dying without having got the answers they want, and we must do something about it. We must improve what is provided to give people the answers they want. I want to see swift movement to achieve a system that is right and that delivers the best, bearing in mind that it will never meet everybody's needs and may never be acceptable to 100% of our population.