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Three Northern Ireland victims of the Post Office IT scandal have been awarded £1.8 million in redress payments.
More than 900 former sub-postmasters across the UK were wrongly prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 because the Horizon computer system wrongly showed missing payments from their branch accounts.
Convictions were quashed by the Post Office (Horizon Systems) Act 2024, which came after a group of sub-postmasters took legal action against the Post Office.
The Horizon Convictions Redress Scheme was launched by the Government to enable people wrongly convicted of a crime because of the Horizon IT system used by the Post Office to apply for financial redress.
In a statement the solicitors’ firm representing the three Northern Ireland victims, Madden & Finucane, said each client has received a final settlement of £600,000, following interim payments of £200,000 last December under the overturned convictions redress scheme.
The three do not want to be identified, however it is understood they are a woman from the Craigavon area who was convicted of false accounting, a woman from the mid-Down area who was convicted of theft and a man from Belfast who was convicted of theft and false accounting.
The law firm said that over the past week they have secured total compensation payments of £1.8 million.
Michael Madden of Madden & Finucane Solicitors said the redress payments are welcomed, but cannot undo the damage done.
“The payments secured for three of our clients this week completes their full exoneration, following the overturning of their faulty convictions last year,” he said.
“They lived under the cloud of tarnished reputations for years and separately experienced devastating damage resulting from the miscarriage of justice. Although the redress payments are greatly welcomed, not all the damage can be undone, nor years given back.”
