Bomb victim’s partner denied army pension
Derry Journal
25 January 2008
A Derry woman says she has been refused an army pension because she and her partner were not married when he died in a Real IRA bomb blast in the city’s Waterside.
David Caldwell
Father-of-three David Caldwell, a former UDR soldier, died after picking up a lunchbox packed with explosives at a TA base on the Limavady Road almost six years ago.
His long-term partner Mavis McFaul says the Ministry of Defence has told her she does not qualify for his pension. She insists she is struggling to get by on income support.
“It’s terrible. I’m sitting here in the house and I’ve a mortgage over my head and all I’m getting is £79 a week,” she said. “That’s what I have to live on, to pay for oil and groceries for me and the wee girl.”
Derry MP Mark Durkan, who has taken up the case, is urging the MoD to act with sensitivity.
“Here is a woman and a daughter who have lost someone in a terrible atrocity,” he said. “The issue that the MoD would be relying on will appear to them to be grossly insensitive and almost a bit of a ‘gotcha clause’ where they’re looking for an excuse not to pay.”
