There are still so many unhealed wounds from the trauma and grief of the Troubles that any new proposals for dealing with the victims attract instant controversy.A report commissioned by the British government suggests a £12,000 payment to each family of the 3,700 people killed, regardless of personal circumstances and regardless of whether the person who died was a terrorist or an innocent victim.
Already there's a heated debate over the proposals, with Unionist politicians angrily demanding that the families of terrorists shouldn't get any payment.
The authors of the report, Lord Robin Eames and Denis Bradley*, point out that whether the dead were terrorists or not, those left behind were equally traumatised and bereft. That's absolutely true, and the Unionists are deliberately missing the point for their own ends.
My own objection is a different one, and that is how any sum of money could possibly compensate for personal grief and loss. In fact it's almost an insult to say a wad of cash is an appropriate response.
Surely the more sensible approach is to offer each family the particular help they need, be it counselling, financial assistance, childcare or whatever. And this sort of help should be available in any case from the public services, so there shouldn't be any need for extra initiatives.
I also have to ask whether it makes sense to give £40 million of public funds to people who may not need it or want it, when the many thousands of people knocked for six by the economic slump need help much more urgently to keep a roof over their heads and feed their families.
Of course we need to recognise the dreadful suffering caused by the Troubles, but this proposal is an odd way of doing it.
* Lord Eames is a former Church of Ireland primate. Denis Bradley is a former vice-chairman of the Northern Ireland policing board.
Photo: the aftermath of the Omagh bombing in 1998
