Birmingham Six confident of backing by Government

THE Birmingham Six are confident that the Government will help press their case for increased compensation from Britain. They declared this after meeting officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin yesterday.

The six men have described as "derogatory" the British Home Office offer of £13,000 each for every year of their wrongful imprisonment. With extra payments for loss of earnings and other specific claims, it is believed the formal offers which have been made to five of the six men are about £300,000 each.

However, one of the six, Mr Billy Power, said the issue was more than one of monetary recompense.

There is still a residue of guilt surrounding us, especially as far as the British press is concerned. And unless proper compensation is made, we'll never get rid of that", he said.

We're not concerned with the amount as such. We want an award that says to the world we re-innocent."

The Department officials had been well briefed for the Labour meeting, he added, and had assured them that the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, would have met them personally had he not been in the us.

"We're hoping the Government will take it up for us, because we can't do any more. They didn't get involved in our case for 12 years, but in fairness, when they did get involved they did everything they could. We hope they'll do it again now.

Mr Power said the interim payments they had each received were running out and he expected to be claiming social security benefits within a few weeks' time.

Another of the group, Mr Paddy Hill, said he had spent £110,000 on a house in London for himself and his son. He and the others were unemployable in Britain, he added, and the compensation offered was completely inadequate.

It was also far lower than other miscarriage of justice payments, he added.

"The British attitude is that the Irish are sub-human. They think they can give us the crumbs off the table and expect us to ho grateful."