Call for £200m RIR payoff package

The RIR's NI-based battalions are to be disbanded

Full-time soldiers hit by the disbandment of the Royal Irish Regiment home battalions should get redundancy payments of £60,000, the UUP has said.

Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey told Defence Secretary John Reid some Royal Irish troops should serve with the reduced garrison of 5,000 soldiers.

He discussed disbanding the three battalions with Mr Reid in London.

More than 3,000 jobs look set to go in the security scaledown, announced after the IRA pledged to end all violence.

Sir Reg's proposals included £1,500 for part-timers for every year of their service.

"You could be talking about up to £200m in total," he said.

"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 Mr 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 Northern Ireland, Sir Reg said that some Royal Irish soldiers should be kept.

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

"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," he said.