£200m (€296m) Irish Regiment pay-off demands

21/09/2005 - 18:44:27
The British government tonight faced demands to agree a £200m (€296m) redundancy package for Royal Irish Regiment soldiers.

Ulster Unionist Party leader Reg Empey urged Defence Secretary John Reid to come up with hefty pay-offs when the RIR’s three home service battalions are disbanded in under two years.

More than 3,000 jobs look set to go under the security scaledown, announced in response to the IRA’s pledge to end all violence for good.

But amid unionist outrage at the plan, Sir Reg held talks with Dr Reid in London in a bid to retain some Royal Irish troops to serve with the reduced garrison of 5,000 soldiers from August 2007.

No guarantees were given during the meeting, but the UUP chief also pressed for generous redundancy terms.

His proposals included an extra £60,000 (€89,000) for all full time members and £1,500 (€2,222) for part-timers for every year of their service.

“You could be talking about up to £200m (€296m) in total,” Sir Reg confirmed.

“But the Government has already spent the guts of that on the Saville Inquiry (into the Bloody Sunday shootings) and they continue to find money for ex-prisoners groups.

“So they can jolly well acknowledge the circumstances these people find themselves in.”

During the hour-long meeting Dr Reid was warned that the military will be stretched because of troop commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Rather than have to prepare units for service in the North, Sir Reg argued that some Royal Irish soldiers should be kept.

Specialist retraining programmes similar to those provided for police who retired early under reforms in the North should also be made available for the RIR, the UUP claimed.

Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram is expected to assess the proposals alongside Dr Reid before coming back to Sir Reg.

The UUP leader added: “Retaining a locally-recruited capability would be a much more cost effective aid to civil power if required than relying on regular Army providing the back-up when they are stretched across the world and would need training.”