FORMER SUB-POSTMISTRESS SPEAKS OUT

A LEITRIM woman who lost
her business as a result of
the Post Office Horizon IT
scandal has given a cautious
welcome to recent
developments surrounding
it.
Following the airing of the ITV
drama ‘Mr Bates vs The Post Office’
over the Christmas holidays, media
focus on the long-running saga has
intensified to an unprecedented level,
accelerating political moves to
progress it to a conclusion.
However, Kathy McAlerney, who
ran the village post office within her
Corner House shop between 2000 and
2007, has said that she will not be
getting carried away despite things
seemingly “going in the right
direction”.
The former subpostmistress first
spoke publicly about her ordeal in a
powerful and in-depth interview with
the Mourne Observer last February,
in which she detailed how she was left
with no option but to close her
premises after being wrongly accused
of financial irregularities, which had
been the result of software glitches in
the Fujitsu developed Horizon system.
With the Post Office demanding
various amounts of money – this
ranged from £3,000 to £30,000 at
different junctures – Leitrim Post
Office was defunded and shut down in
January 2007, and, within six months,
the Corner House’s shop closed its
doors.
Demands for payment persevered
after this, and Mrs McAlerney said
that she was advised that “nobody
else had ever had a problem with
Horizon, and that it was only me”,
which latterly proved to be a recurring
theme across the UK.
An out of court settlement was
reached in 2012 – this spared a
wrongful criminal conviction, though
736 subpostmasters and
subpostmistresses were convicted
between 2000 and 2014 – and, soon
after this, she found out about the
Justice For Subpostmasters Alliance
group.
Legal action
The local woman got in touch with
its founder Alan Bates – around whom
the ITV drama centred – and she
joined a group of 555 claimants that
successfully took legal action against
the government-owned Post Office in
2019.
This resulted in a settlement that
saw a payout of £43m plus legal costs,
though much of this was swallowed up
funding the case.
Since the airing of the drama,
former Post Office chief executive
Paula Vennells has handed back the
CBE she was awarded in 2019 – over
one million people had signed a
petition calling on her to do this – and
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak
announced in the House of Commons
that he would introduce primary
legislation to exonerate those wrongly
convicted and that a £75,000
compensation payment would be
made to victims of the scandal.
Speaking to the Mourne Observer
on Friday, Mrs McAlerney said that
the impact of ‘Mr Bates vs The Post
Office’ had been “totally unexpected”
and “unprecedented”.
“We thought it would raise the
profile of the issue, but I don’t think
anybody expected just how powerful
and evocative the drama would be,”
she stated.
“I actually thought it probably could
be quite boring, because it is a dusty
old subject – a computer system that
goes wrong.
“But it just really shows how
amazing it is when something like this
is produced.
“You don’t really know in advance
how you are going to feel about it, but
I just thought it was really emotive.”
The Leitrim woman added that the
show had “told the story so well”, and,
for her, “it really was like being back
nearly 17 years ago”.
“There is the scene where the
character of Jo Hamilton sits in the
post office, surrounded by all the
papers, and she is in tears with
frustration that she can’t make the
system balance,” she said.
“That just really brought it back to
me, because I had spent so many
nights when I got the kids to bed and
the shop would be closed, and I could
sit quietly with no distractions and try
to balance it.
“But it never would balance – it was
such a frustrating experience.
“The show was very powerful, and it
was just so sad.
“It all seems so futile really, doesn’t
it?
“All those lives destroyed and
people lost their lives, and all because
of a computer system.”
Miscarriage of justice
Mrs McAlerney stated that she is
not annoyed or embittered that it took
a TV drama for such a major
miscarriage of justice to achieve the
prominence it has now achieved.
“I think really the whole Post Office
scandal has become part of my life,
because it has been 17 years,” she
said.
“It has been an integral part of my
life, and it is difficult to imagine what
life will be like when it is all over.
“Obviously, I will be glad when it is.
“We were always determined that
we would fight on no matter how long
it took, that we would never give up.
“It is just very sad that so many of
our group have died and never got
their names cleared or the financial
redress that they were due, their
money back, and that is so sad.
“I don’t think I am bitter about it.
“I just want to move on with my life
– I am very happy that I got through it,
as lots of people weren’t so lucky.
“I am just glad about that, and
thankful for that.”
The former subpostmistress
acknowledged that Mrs Vennells’ CBE
appointment in 2019 had caused
dismay, and stated that she believes
that the pressure created by the
number of petition signatures had
“become too much” for the former
chief executive to withstand.
She described Rishi Sunak’s
parliamentary announcement last
Wednesday as “a welcome step”,
though added that “it is only a step”.
“We have been let down so many
times and have had so many false
promises made to us that I don’t get
my hopes up,” concluded Mrs
McAlerney.
“I very firmly keep my feet on the
ground.
“I’d give it a cautious welcome as
it’s a step –we are not there yet.
“The devil is always in the detail,
and I haven’t heard anything other
than what everyone else heard when
Rishi Sunak made the statement that
day.
“We seem to be going in the right
direction, though we still have some
way to go and we know that.
“We are under no illusions about the
way it has still to unfold, but I think we
are nearly there.
“We thought, in 2019, we had done it
when we won the legal case, but that
proved to be a bit of a false dawn.”