Some years ago at the request of a well-known clergyman, RUC fraud squad officers who were set up to deal exclusively with paramilitary fraud called with me and took away my files for inspection with my permission.
When the two officers returned with my files they told me that they had found evidence of criminal activity but because there was no paramilitary involvement, they were not permitted to take the matter any further!
They did however pass the information over to the "ordinary" fraud squad officers - I expect and hope that all my papers were copied. That was some years ago and nothing has ever been done about the criminal activity.

After a most surprising and long delay, especially for a government department which is rather ruthless, the Crown solicitor eventually caused me to become bankrupt and so became the latest victim to be caught in this web of deceit spun by the terralux cover-up squad.

Mr. Bill Giles was the official in charge of my bankruptcy case. He told me over the phone that my two cars would not be touched. I had given him all the information he required. I was later informed that my cars would be taken off me and sold.

I rang Mr. Giles and he said that this change of decision had been made by someone above him. My 1988 Austin Metro which I needed for getting around in - I wasn't able to use public transport because of my phobia - was driven out of my yard and sold to pay for services that DDC have refused to provide me with for years.

I had been working on an old 1983 VW Polo which had been damaged, not badly, and written off. I had it about half repaired. I needed it to try to make a few pounds as it was really my only means of making money since most people had stopped coming to me to get work done as mentioned earlier. The VW Polo was pushed out of my yard, towed away and sold to pay for services that DDC have refused to provide me with for years.

The two cars were sold for half of what I would have expected to get for them.

Had it not been for the intervention of Mr. James Molyneaux, now Lord Molyneaux, No.11 would have been sold too.
The Insolvency Department never paid one pound of the money received for the cars to the Rates Department and they did not even get enough money to cover their own departmental costs.

The laws regarding the security of moneylenders such as Building Societies must be changed. Building Societies must be made to share the risk of lending money with borrowers. As the law stands here, borrowers are made to take all the risks. Borrowers must have their legal rights strengthened.

Government departments must also be made to share their rights to ratepayers' money, with the rights of ratepayers' to securing the services which that money goes to provide. Magistrates must not be allowed to rubber-stamp a government department's demand for rates money if it is pointed out in court that such a demand is in any way improper.
If a citizen objects in court to such a demand, the matter should be referred to a proper Ombudsman for a full investigation. The judiciary and its legal procedure must be made much less clumsy. As it stands it is a monster, fearsome and frightening, not only open to abuse and far from being just, but actually abused by the court officers in the shape of lawyers who are sworn to uphold the law.

There must be a proper Ombudsman installed here. Our office of Commissioner for Complaints is a government backed and government used tool, totally biased in its concept and in its operation and formulated to protect fraudulent activity in government departments. The very Act under which the office of Commissioner for Complaints operates here is a contravention of human rights.

Recently I phoned Councillor Alexander (DUP) to see if I could get a photograph back from DDC that I had sent to them for their own information many years ago. He told me to phone Mr. Fisher the Group Chief Building Control Officer. I phoned Mr. Fisher but instead of returning the photograph, he sent me a photocopy of it. I still have not been able to have that photograph returned in order to put it on my website.
At least the photocopy is proof that Down District Council still has the photographic evidence of the defective structure in my former home and for some reason are holding on to it.

The following letter was published in the Mourne Observer on January 14th 1998;

"Dear Sir,
It was in September 1997 that Mr. Gerry Rice first threw down the gauntlet and challenged me to give an opinion on the use of Terralux Blocks in houses built almost thirty years ago. Needless to say, in September my acquaintance with the properties of building materials was limited to say the least, but I decided to take up the gauntlet nonetheless, and in the three months since then I have learned quite a lot about Terralux blocks.

I began by contacting independent experts in the fields of Building Control and the law. Mr. Rice was kind enough to give me access to all his own files and documentation on the case in question.

In the opinion of these independent experts, Terralux blocks should never have been used in the building of houses, particularly in load-bearing walls, or in fireplaces. Terralux are cellular, porous blocks through which smoke and/or gases will without a doubt permeate, and if Terralux blocks are used in fireplaces, unless the inner-leaf dividing walls are more than one inch in thickness, these will invade the adjoining house.

Over twenty years ago Mr. Rice found himself in just this situation, with smoke invading his home from the house next door. After Mr. Rice first complained about this problem, umpteen inspections were made on his property to decide whether or not smoke was in fact coming into his home from his neighbour's house. Such a protracted investigation would be enough to drive anyone to distraction, particularly when it should have been obvious that a chimney breast constructed of Terralux blocks would be certain to behave in the way described by Mr. Rice and his family, and that smoke would leak from one flue to another.

Whilst none of the experts I consulted was prepared to say that the use of Terralux blocks was illegal almost thirty years ago, it is fairly obvious even to a layman, that such a material was never suitable for use in fireplaces. We can only speculate about the reasons for their use by builders at that time. I have been told that they were used in thousands of homes in those years.

In June 1979 the Commissioner for Complaints (N.I.) in his judgement on the case found that Mr. Rice did not sustain injustice in consequence of maladministration by Down District Council in relation to his complaint. An initial report had found in his favour, but this was overturned after the Conservatives came to power in May 1979.

While legally the judgement went against Mr. Rice, morally it is plain that there was a case to answer. In human terms this family has suffered immeasurably because of the prevailing approach to building in the 1970's.

In the end Mr. Rice and his family lost their home as a result of this battle, and he continues to fight for justice to this day.

In the age of apologies for Changi Jail and Bloody Sunday, perhaps Mr. Rice may yet receive a belated apology from the successors of those who first gave rise to his misfortune.

He knows that I have promised to help him in every way I can.

Carmel O'Boyle, BA PGCE MA. SDLP Down District Councillor"

The following week Councillor Anne Carr, a member of the Women's Coalition Party put the following letter in the Mourne Observer:

"Sir,
May I concur totally with the sentiments of Cllr O'Boyle in relation to the suffering which has been inflicted on Mr. Gerry Rice and his family over 21 long years because he dared to challenge the use of Terralux Blocks in his home.

I have also read with great interest the detailed documentation which Mr. Rice has gathered over the years and although I have asked many questions of a variety of so-called 'informed' people in this field, none is prepared to say that the use of these blocks 30 years ago was illegal.

Common sense though would tell even the naïve, that cellular, porous blocks would not be the best choice for the construction of chimney breasts and that smoke and dangerous gases were bound to find their way through.

The reality of the current situation is that Gerry Rice and his family have lost their home and have been forced to live in mobile accommodation for all these years.

The dignity with which they have carried on, raised their children and fought for nothing more than truth and justice is to be admired by us all.

Gerry and his family should certainly be granted the necessary apologies without delay, but more than that they must be given the support to explore all avenues which could in some way help to financially compensate them for their untold suffering.

Anne Carr (Councillor)"

Towards the end of February 1991, at the age of 53, I watched a programme on BBC 2 television which documented the suffering of three people, a television cameraman, a young married mother and a single girl.
These three people were suffering from panic attacks. I had never heard of this disorder but I knew exactly what they were going through. This was exactly what I had suffered at the age of 19 and during the years since.
I wrote to the programme makers to thank them and to seek the sheet that was available on the subject. I received a letter back apologising for the delay which was inevitable because 12,000 people had written in to the programme.
After finding out what nobody in the medical profession had been able to tell me for most of my life I was now able to talk openly about my health problem for the first time. Later that year I joined a wonderful organisation called Grow.
This organisation was founded in Australia in 1957 and has spread to four continents. During the next six years I gained a great insight into my problem and by 1997 I had turned around a lifetime suffering in ignorance of my condition. I had gained knowledge and confidence.
I was now driving long distances on my own. I even completed a lecture course in Queen's University and was really looking forward to further study if my essay on the course was worthy of a sufficiently high mark. Before I received the letter from the university telling me that I had received full marks for my essay, I was knocked down by a car while I was attending the scene of another accident where the police were also in attendance.

My physical injuries were not serious although after three years my neck still sticks and cracks, my knees still crack and my arms lost some of their strength, but the panic and especially the anxiety attacks with their depressing daily occurrence returned far worse than before.

I have had to start all over again and with the help, support and guidance of my Grow friends I am getting there. I am now an organiser for our local Grow group and have just been made secretary of Grow (Northern Ireland).

Grow is non-denominational and open to all and there are no fees or dues. It is a whole new concept in recovering mental health from whatever level and has the support of the World Health Organisation.

My wife and I now live on my partial disability living allowance and her income support. I do a little work in my garage but have to pay my rates payments out of my disability living allowance to keep the garage open. Neither of us will have a proper pension.
Now at the beginning of January 2004, Gemma has her pension and I have had my cut-down pension for almost a year. It has been stopped since mid-November, but I am told I will be getting in back, and increased, on Monday next.

Scores of thousands of dwelling houses throughout Northern Ireland are built with terralux blocks just like 56 Carlisle Park. It would take several billions of pounds of government money to compensate people for this fraud. It won't be paid, which maybe goes a little way to explain a little of the tragedy which has been Northern Ireland for all these years, and like the tragedy of our case, it is still ongoing.

It is so sad that I had to approach almost thirty firms of solicitors during these years for help. Most of these solicitors - officers of the Court - refused to become involved, and those who did worked at it for up to two years before dropping it. Mr. Chambers' handling of the case was unique to say the least, and no other solicitor I asked would act against him. As Mr. Peter Robinson MP stated, as far back as February 3rd 1983, quote,

"I can also say that Mr. Mawhinney and myself found it incredible that this case has not yet been brought to court."

On May 1st 2003 I began my second course on computers and the internet with the Open University. It was a level 2 course and at 65 years of age I was very pleased at my ability to cope with the coursework.
Students who had personal web sites usually posted their site address to one of the course conferences and some students posted a number of messages regarding my site here at www.gerryrice.com

In reply to one student's comments, I sent the following message:

"As a society, we are in a real mess here in Northern Ireland despite the worst of the atrocities being over. My story is only one of loads and the 'good guys' operating the 'peace process' here are staying silent on them all.

That is why I had to write my book. Thank you for your interest Sammi. This is what drives a middle-aged man to learn HTML. I suppose it could be said to be the latest weapon to be used in Northern Ireland :-)))"

To my great surprise one of the moderators on the course, Mr. Rob Parsons, replied to this message and I considered this message so relevant and contained such insight that I asked his permission to include it on my web site. Here is the moderator's message.

"More true than many people might think at first.
The web is a way to get the truth out, if only to a limited audience, when the "media" won't listen because it's not a "story". Thinking about the discussion that is going on in Teach (this was the main course conference), about content and presentation, another way of looking at it is content and distribution.

You have the content.

Until the net come along distrbution was either very hard work or cost a lot of money. The web makes it cheap, which means, (a) almost everybody in the developed world (very important caveat that) can get access if they want it and, (b) we are starting to have to learn to use our judgement again.

Because there are no gatekeepers anybody can publish anything, so we have to learn to sort the gems, like www.gerryrice.com from the dross, like... well, name any one of millions of sites. Though it's harder work, I think its potential for democracy is huge, because if people are going to benefit from it in the long run, they're going to have to think.
Rob.
TT280 co-moderator.

Please tell your friends about this story.

Gerry Rice. January 8th 2004.