The recommendation by the Patten Report reviewer, Mr John Steele, that RUC widows should have their compensation awards increased has followed a long campaign by women who felt they were badly neglected by the British government.
The £11 million sterling relief package for the widows and dependants of murdered police officers has come about after a lengthy and, at times, difficult campaign. There has been little official encouragement or assistance for RUC widows.
Until this summer they had waged their campaign for greater recognition and compensation from their own homes. In May they were finally given offices at the Police Retraining and Rehabilitation Trust (PRRT) in the former Anglo-Irish Secretariat office complex at Maryfield in east Belfast.
The package includes a lump sum of £2 million sterling for the widows of full-time RUC officers and members of the RUC Reserve killed before 1982. During that period 107 members of the regular force and 54 reserve members were killed.
The remaining £9 million sterling will go into a new police fund established to help seriously injured officers, injured retired officers and their families, as well as police widows.
Many widows of RUC officers killed before 1982 - when new benefits were introduced - have been living close to the poverty line on pensions of less than £2,000 sterling.
Since 1982 widows of officers killed on duty have received lump sums of up to £100,000 and have had their mortgages paid off.
Under the new scheme, widows will receive a lump sum of £1,000 for each year since their husbands's deaths. The maximum payment where an officer was killed in 1969 will be £31,000.
A spokeswoman for the pre1982 widows' group, known as "The Forgotten Families", said they still did not have parity of treatment with widows whose husbands were murdered after 1982. Equivalent post-1982 pensions were as much as five times higher.
The spokeswoman pointed to the case of a widow on a pension of £1,932 a year who would receive a lump sum of £30,000. If this lump sum was invested at 8 per cent, the income generated would be about £2,400, giving her an annual income of £4,332.
"While this obviously increases the widow's income, it is difficult to see how this amount would be adequate to ensure a reasonable standard of living," she said.
The Belfast Telegraph, which highlighted the plight of the pre1982 widows, found 80 of the women were on pensions of £38 per week. Mrs Dorothy Arbuckle, whose husband, Victor, was the first RUC officer killed in the Troubles - during loyalist rioting on the Shankill Road in October 1969 - was one of those who spoke to the newspaper after remaining silent for 31 years. She has been receiving a payment of £44.25 per week.
Both systems of compensation payments, however, still contrast starkly with the amounts awarded to widows of gardai killed on duty. Since 1941, when there was a threat to the life of gardai from a renewed IRA campaign, the Garda Compensation Act has provided entitlements to widows which most Garda representatives say are generous.
In the most recent case, Mrs Yvonne Callinan, the widow of Sgt Andrew Callinan, received an interim compensation sum of £644,900. Sgt Callinan was killed when attacked by a man with a container of petrol in Tallaght Garda Station on July 21st last year.
Last February, Mrs Ann McCabe, whose husband Jerry was shot dead by the IRA in Adare, Co Limerick on June 7th, 1996, was awarded £491,500. Det Garda Ben O'Sullivan, who was seriously injured in the same attack, received compensation of £401,272.
Garda widows are further entitled to an enhanced pension based on half their spouse's pay, along with a gratuity of 1 1/2 times final salary. The RUC widows' pension is higher, at two-thirds their husbands' pay.
Following the success of the RUC widows' action, it is anticipated the widows of prison officers and members of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) will press for more compensation. A total of 197 UDR soldiers and 28 prison officers were killed. Another 60 UDR members were killed after they left the force.
Mr Finlay Spratt, general secretary of the Prison Officers' Association (POA) in Northern Ireland, said yesterday the widows of prison officers had been left destitute in some cases. He described the process of seeking compensation for the loss of a spouse as "cruel and demeaning".