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A Northern Ireland subpostmistress who received an 18-month prison sentence amid the Horizon IT scandal is among those to have received confirmation their convictions have now been formally quashed.
The Department of Justice is contacting subpostmasters and subpostmistresses whose convictions have been quashed following the passing of legislation at Westminster.
The draft legislation originally did not cover Northern Ireland, but the region was added to the Bill shortly before it was passed by MPs in May.
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Officials believe there were 26 subpostmasters and subpostmistresses in Northern Ireland who received wrongful convictions linked to the faulty IT system.
More than 700 people who ran Post Offices in the UK were prosecuted by the company and handed criminal convictions between 1999 and 2015 as Fujitsu’s faulty Horizon IT system made it appear as though money was missing at their branches.
The Post Office (Horizon System) Act 2024 is to exonerate those convicted on the basis of the faulty Horizon accounting software.
Madden and Finucane solicitors said four of its clients had now received letters from the Department of Justice confirming their convictions had been quashed.
Solicitor Michael Madden said: “We are delighted that four of our clients have had their convictions quashed after instructing us to challenge their Post Office Horizon convictions.”
“The convictions ruined the lives of my clients, including that of a woman who received an eighteen month suspended custodial sentence.”
“We look forward to applying for immediate redress under the new Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme on behalf of our clients.”
“We continue to work with the DOJ in respect of more clients who are still waiting for the DOJ to complete their process of identifying convictions that have been quashed by the new Act.”
Welcoming the news, Independent MLA Claire Sugden said that nothing like this should happen again.
“This hopefully marks the end of a long and arduous legal battle to have these convictions quashed and the good names of all those who were caught up in it restored,” she said.
“The amount of emotional, financial and reputational damage that these innocent people experienced is impossible to quantify. The quashing of these convictions must now, however, pave the way for significant restitution to compensate these victims for the years’-long nightmare they were subjected to.
“How this was able to happen on the scale it did, and for the length of time it took, must also be determined so as nothing like this can ever happen again.
“This scandal reached into the four corners of the UK, including Portstewart. Everyone involved needs to be part of making this entire saga right.”
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