Former NI postmistresses 'relieved and delighted' over Post Office settlement

Two former NI postmistresses have said they are "relieved and delighted" with their employer's decision to settle a long-running dispute with sub-postmasters and postmistresses.

On Wednesday, the Post Office announced it will pay almost £58m.

The settlement brings an end to a mammoth series of court cases over the Horizon IT system used to manage local post office finances since 1999.

A group of postmasters said faults led to them wrongly being accused of fraud.

The Post Office accepted it had "got things wrong in our dealings with a number of postmasters" in the past.

Deirdre Connolly, 50, from County Tyrone, was one of more than 550 former post office staff across the UK taking a group action against Post Office Ltd.

Mrs Connolly claimed she wrongly had to repay £16,000 after the computer in the Killeter post office branch showed a deficit in 2010.

She was the sub postmistress there from 2006 to 2010.

She said, at the time, she had been "devastated"" because "everybody thought I was a thief".

"I couldn't pinpoint what was going on but asked for the Post Office to give me an idea of where I went wrong," she explained.

"I didn't come out of the house for a long time. It was an awful, awful time."

Welcoming the Post Office's decision, she said she was "delighted no other sub-postmaster is going to go through what we went through".

"Getting our names cleared was all I wanted, for my good character to be restored because I know I didn't take any money."

She said the settlement marked the start of a new chapter for her family.

The Horizon system, which is provided by Fujitsu, is still being used in all 11,500 Post Office branches in the UK.

Sub-postmasters run Post Office franchises across the UK, which typically provide some but not all of the services of a main post office.

The group of 550 claimants joined a civil action to win compensation last year, but their complaint goes back much further.

They alleged that the Horizon IT system, which was installed between 1999 and 2000, contained a large number of defects.

Some said their lives had been ruined when they were pursued for funds which managers claimed were missing. Some even went to jail after being convicted of fraud.

The claimants were half way through a series of four trials when the Post Office sought mediation. It could take several weeks for individual compensation payments to be worked out.

The Post Office apologised to the claimants, saying it was grateful to them "for holding us to account in circumstances where, in the past, we have fallen short".

Fiona Elliott said she put thousands of pounds of money from her shop into the Clady branch, which she ran from 2000 to 2005.

"During my time there was a lot of discrepancies and we were putting in a lot of money from the shop to keep the Post Office open," she said.

"We had to give up the Post Office and [put the] shop up for sale.

"At the time we felt really drained and we didn't want to lose the business. We felt we were letting everyone in the village down, but we just couldn't keep it open."

She did not join the civil action but is now reconsidering.

She said she was "delighted" for those who had taken a case and said she felt that "now their names are cleared".