The passage of time has not made the proposal that every family bereaved during the Troubles, including those whose loved ones were paramilitaries, should receive a payment from the state in recognition of their loss any less controversial.
Victims’ commissioner Ian Jeffers, who leaves the role this week, argues that all bereaved families should receive a one-off payment, with £10,000 the suggested amount.
There are unavoidable echoes here of the conclusions of the Consultative Group on the Past, which reported 15 years ago this month. That panel, led by Denis Bradley and Lord Robin Eames, proposed a “one-off ex-gratia recognition payment of £12,000″ to the families of all those killed in the Troubles.
Despite the hostility with which that plan was met, the concept of universal Troubles bereavement payments has not gone away, as this week’s intervention by Mr Jeffers and the Commission for Victims and Survivors shows.
That those intimately involved in working with victims and survivors, with listening to their stories and experiences, continue to believe that offering payments to all bereaved families is the correct course of action is a viewpoint that, however contentious and unpalatable many will find it, cannot be easily dismissed.
The idea that bombers and gunmen should be treated equally to the victims of their explosions and bullets is, of course, reprehensible. That does not seem to be what Mr Jeffers is saying, though he could have been clearer on this.
Instead, the key point - following Eames-Bradley - is that all bereaved victims and survivors have not had their suffering properly acknowledged, and a payment would offer some belated - albeit inadequate - recognition of how, as Mr Jeffers puts it, they “have often felt forgotten and pushed aside…”.
Less strong is his argument that the payments would promote reconciliation.
Mr Jeffers is making this proposal at a time when the British government has cynically intervened in legacy issues with legislation that, among other things, will end Troubles inquests and offer amnesties to perpetrators
Nor is there an Assembly or Executive to take on the advice from Mr Jeffers, much less any political consensus on this issue in the north.
It isn’t even clear when or how Mr Jeffers’ successor as Commissioner for Victims and Survivors will be appointed.
More than a quarter of a century after the Good Friday Agreement, the voices of victims and survivors are too often still unheard.
