Seven Northern Ireland police officers, including one injured in a booby trap bomb, who fled their homes after being targeted by republican dissidents have been told their rent allowances for alternative accommodation will end next year.
All seven were saddled with negative equity after being forced out of their houses on the advice of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and had to try to sell their properties.
The five male and two female officers’ home addresses had fallen into the hands of republican terror groups opposed to the peace process.
The Police Federation of Northern Ireland said the decision to end their rental support on 1 April 2016 was scandalous. Before its annual conference in Belfast on Wednesday, the Federation said all seven faced uncertainty about what would happen to the negative equity they had to carry over from their evacuated homes. They had yet to be informed what alternative schemes would be put in place to re-house them, the Federation said.
Before his conference speech, chairman Mark Lindsay said the decision to remove full rental support was a decision “not taken with any cognisance of these officers’ personal sacrifices”.
The federation estimates that it would cost the Department of Justice about £500,000 to write off the PSNI officers’ negative equity debts. The organisation representing the PSNI’s rank and file pointed out that the force handed back £14m in efficiencies saved to the central policing budget this year. Lindsay said a fraction of that money could have helped the seven officers. They includes one policeman who was forced to leave his home seven years ago and is still mired in debt.
Civilians as well as police officers and members of the armed forces under terrorist threat can avail themselves of the scheme for the purchase of evacuated dwellings. Under scheme, anyone who flees their home due to paramilitary or sectarian threats can have their home bought by the public housing authority in the region at market price. In the case of all seven PSNI officers, their homes were valued well below market value at the time they were warned their lives were in danger.
Lindsay said one policeman who was under a dissident republican death threat could not benefit from the scheme because he was a recruit from the Republic of Ireland and, as a citizen of a different jurisdiction, had no entitlement.
Lindsay appealed to justice minister David Ford to help the seven officers and their families: “They were uprooted from their homes, families, school friends and work colleagues, to be placed in temporary emergency accommodation.
“All have suffered severe negative equity, and our demand now, as then, is for government to give these men and women a fresh start by addressing this problem. There is a moral imperative to support those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves grievously disadvantaged. As though being under the threat of death wasn’t burden enough, these brave men and women are being asked to pay a very high price for the privilege.”
Underlining the existing threat to PSNI officers across Northern Ireland from the three main republican dissident terror groups – the new IRA, Continuity IRA and Óglaigh na hÉireann – Lindsay told delegates that there had been 74 shooting incidents, 39 bombings and 58 so-called paramilitary punishment attacks since their last conference.
