PSNI and MoD settle £4.6 million Troubles attack claim

The Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Ministry of Defence have settled a civil claim brought by eight victims of a loyalist gun attack at the Thierafurth Inn in Kilcoo, County Down, in what is believed to be one of the largest payouts tied to a Troubles case. One account placed the total compensation at £4.6 million.

The case arose from the November 1992 shooting, when a UVF gang opened fire during a darts tournament at the pub. Peter McCormack, 42, was killed and three others were seriously wounded. The attack has long stood as one of the most severe loyalist assaults in south Down, where allegations of security-force collusion have shadowed the historical record for decades.

The settlement brings to an end a civil process that took 11 years to reach conclusion. It also lands against the backdrop of an earlier High Court ruling in Belfast that the state had breached its legal duty by failing to carry out an effective, human-rights-compliant investigation into the killing. That finding made the claim about more than damages alone: it turned on whether the state had met its obligations to investigate a fatal attack with the seriousness the law required.

For survivors and the McCormack family, the payment cannot answer the larger question of why the case took so long to resolve, or why the investigative failures were left to be tested through civil litigation rather than a prompt and effective public inquiry. The settlement underscores how, for many Troubles cases, financial redress now arrives decades after the violence, after memories have faded and the demand for truth remains unresolved.

John McEvoy, one of the survivors, was pictured outside the High Court in Belfast as the case concluded on 8 July 2026. Gavin Booth, the lawyer representing the victims through Phoenix Law, said they had suffered severe trauma. Their claim has now produced a substantial payout, but the wider institutional questions remain fixed on the same point: whether compensation is becoming the main instrument of accountability when the state has already failed to deliver truth, scrutiny and justice in real time.