Northern Ireland (Executive Formation) Bill

Debate between Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown and Baroness O'Loan

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Monday 15th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I want to add a brief word to what the noble Lord, Lord Hain, and others have said. Unfortunately, many of us have seen, met, worked with and tried to help people whose lives have been shattered by bomb and bullet. I thank the Minister because I understand that he is considering this idea: I am sure the Government will find the money to pay these pensions to such a very small number of people. I want us to remember, particularly, the children. There are many children living in this situation—second generation, perhaps, from the actual victim of the shooting or bombing—and they may well act as a carer for their grandfather, uncle or father. That is a very difficult life, and they are subjected to the risk of transgenerational trauma, of which there is a significant incidence in Northern Ireland. A pension would allow for a carer, which might set some of those children free.

[Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown]

My Lords, in his introductory remarks the noble Lord, Lord Hain, talked about the Assembly. I say to him simply that he knows that there is one party that had three red lines before it would enter the Executive. No other party put down red lines; it was one party and one party alone. Every other party in the Northern Ireland Assembly was willing, and is willing, without red lines, to enter that Assembly and deal with the matters that the noble Lord, Lord Empey, has already mentioned. Across the Committee, many Members have expressed not only appreciation but support.

I wonder how many people in the Committee know what it is to be in the family of an innocent victim. I stand in this House not to express somebody else’s pain—although as a Minister, I, like the noble Lord, Lord Eames, went to home after home. Hundreds, even thousands, of families have experienced the anguish and pain.

Last weekend, on the evening of 12 July, I entered the home of a couple in their late 70s, both seriously ill. A boulder was thrown through their window into their bedroom on 12 July in broad daylight, and they were terrorised. Tonight they cannot sleep. In actual fact it took them back 20 years, because 20 years ago that same couple were, like a group of other Protestant families in Beatrice Villas in Bellaghy, forced out of their home by the IRA. They had to leave that home 20 years ago and now, 20 years on, with one of them in their late 70s and one 80, they are faced with that terror again.