Denis Bradley: Government made major blunder over legacy plans bbc.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bbc.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Covered up and boxed in a storage vault in the town of Enniskillen, two historic oil paintings gathered dust. King William III commissioned the portraits of himself and Queen Mary after he routed Catholic forces in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, a turning point in Irish history that established Protestant ascendance. Unionists revere King Billy, also known as William of Orange, as a hero who saved their settler ancestors. The portraits used to.
Troubles pension scheme to be paid by Executive Office impartialreporter.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from impartialreporter.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
British government made secret deal with Libya which is blocking IRA victims compensation Colonel Muammar Gaddafi pictured in 1987. The Libyan leader died in 2011. File picture by John Redman, Associated Press
SEFF director Kenny Donaldson
A victims campaigner has claimed the British government reached a secret deal with Libya years ago which is blocking compensation for those injured in IRA attacks.
MPs are looking at attacks sponsored by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi s regime in the north African country.
Gaddafi, who died in 2011, was the IRA s main arms supplier during the Troubles.
Libyan-supplied Semtex was used in high-profile attacks including the Enniskillen bombing in 1987.
The reopening of a payment fund for those bereaved in Northern Ireland’s troubled past has been warmly welcomed.
The Bereaved Self-Directed Assistance Payments scheme provides an annual payment to a spouse or partner, parent or child of someone who was killed, in recognition of their loss.
There had been disappointment when it closed to new applications in 2017.
The aftermath of the IRA’s Hyde Park bomb in 1982 (PA)
Many who had not heard of the fund, from across the UK and Ireland as well as Northern Ireland, felt they had been forgotten about.
These included scores of widows who had been left to raise families by themselves after their husbands were killed.