Statement from Ards TUV Councillor Terry Williams:
 
"Strangford is a constituency heavily populated with ex and current security force personnel. Within that community and much wider afield there, quite rightly, was great opposition to the Eames/Bradley proposal to pay £12,000 to families of perpetrators of terrorism. The equivalence suggested between victims and those who made them victims caused palpable anger.
 
"Now, Mike Nesbitt, a member of the Victims Commission which on 13th November 2008 in its formal response to Eames/Bradley, before they published the £12,000 proposal, welcomed the suggestion of an 'acknowledgement payment'. If Mike Nesbitt as one of those Commissioners was a party to that encouragement to this dire insult to innocent victims then it demonstrates a flawed judgement unsuitable to any MP for Strangford.
 
"So, let's have absolute clarity from Mr Nesbitt as to where he stood on 13 November 2008 - not after the suggestion was publicly villified and rejected - on the £12,000 payout. No ifs, no buts, let Mr Nesbitt come clean on this issue.

“I would also call upon Mike Nesbitt to clarify just exactly how he feels about IRA terrorists. This is a very real issue because after the Victims Commission issued a statement which described the brother of Patricia MacBride as “an IRA volunteer” who died on “active service” Mr Nesbitt said:
"This is Patricia expressing herself in her own terms. Nobody raised an issue at the time.

"We respect Patricia's background and her choice of language is hers."

“This is appalling language for anyone aspiring to be a Unionist MP. How can someone hope to represent the victims of Republican terrorism when they have “no issue” with a terrorist being described in the language of the Provisional movement?”