The husband of a woman killed in the Omagh bombing has described the £7,500 compensation he has received from the British government as "a downright insult". However, the Northern Ireland Office has insisted that this is only an initial payment and the families will be entitled to more money.
Mr Stanley McCombe lost his wife of 25 years, Ann, in the bomb which killed 29 people and injured more than 200 last August.
"Nobody could compensate me for losing Ann," he said, "but to get just £7,500 is a bloody disgrace. I haven't been able to work since the bomb. I'm living on £55.70 sickness benefit a week and disability living allowance. I'm a law-abiding citizen. I have worked all my life.
"Mo Mowlam can talk all she likes about sympathy but she hasn't done anything for me."
However, an NIO spokesman said that the families were entitled to further compensation. "The £7,500 which has been paid out to each family to date is not a final payment but rather the first of three stages of payment," he said.
"It is a standard bereavement grant. The second-stage payment is the reimbursement of reasonable funeral costs. The third and final stage is compensation for pecuniary loss.
"This is assessed on potential earnings of those killed and is designed to compensate for the loss of that income to next-of-kin. Pecuniary loss obviously takes time to calculate and, in the case of the Omagh bombing, this stage has not yet been reached."
The chief executive of the Compensation Agency, Mr Dennis Stanley, said his staff would be processing claims as quickly as possible. "No amount of money can compensate for the loss of a human life. The legislation does not seek to place a value on life, it can only make payments as a gesture to the bereaved family."
However, Mr McCombe still insisted that the bereavement grant was inadequate. He belongs to the recently formed Omagh Self-Help and Support Group, which intends to oppose the Northern Ireland Compensation Agency decision.
It will meet the British Conservative spokesman on Northern Ireland, Mr Andrew Mackay, in Omagh today. It has also been invited to meet the NIO Minister, Mr John McFall, tomorrow.
DUP Assembly member Mr Oliver Gibson, whose niece, Esther, was killed in the bombing, described the NIO as "Scrooge with a turbo charge".
"The level of compensation given to people who have suffered so much and will continue to suffer is just crass, heinous." He said the Compensation Agency needed to open an Omagh office and inform people of what was happening.
He has formed an organisation, Voice, to represent almost 200 families whose relatives were killed by paramilitaries in west Tyrone over the past 30 years.
"This problem goes way back before the Omagh bomb," he said. "Many people in the 1970s were given pitifully small amounts of compensation and still feel the loss of a partner's earning power as they try to put children through university now."
Last year, the Victims Commission, headed by Sir Kenneth Bloomfield, recommended that relatives of those killed in the Troubles might receive one-off payments of as much as £250,000.