THE widow of a murdered RUC reservist will be named tomorrow as Northern Ireland’s first victims’ commissioner.

The appointment will cause some surprise because, although Bertha McDougall has worked on cross-community educational initiatives, she has had little public profile outside police circles. Victims groups say they were not invited to make nominations for the post.

The appointment has been approved by the Democratic Unionist party, which included it in a 54-page page shopping list of “confidence-building measures” it presented to the British government earlier this month.

The party has suggested that if these measures are addressed and IRA violence and criminality is shown to be at an end, then power-sharing with Sinn Fein could be in place in months rather than years.

The appointment will be seen as one in a series of balanced concessions to unionists and nationalists to pave the way for power sharing.

Last month the government made two major appointments to the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission and the Equality Commission which were favoured by nationalists and protested by unionists. It also appointed Ian Paisley to the Privy Council and plans to elevate his wife, Eileen, to the House of Lords.

Next month legislation to allow on-the-run fugitives to return will be tabled at Westminster, a key republican demand that will remove the threat of imprisonment from all IRA, Ulster Defence Association and Ulster Volunteer Force members who committed crimes before the signing of the Good Friday agreement in 1998.

McDougall’s husband Lindsay was shot and fatally wounded by INLA terrorists as he checked a suspicious car in central Belfast’s Great Victoria Street in January 1981. Harry Kirkpatrick, a supergrass, later said that he had driven the car. He named Gerard Steenson, a notorious killer nicknamed Dr Death, as the gunman.

After being left widowed with three children, McDougall devoted herself to helping other bereaved police relatives. She led a successful campaign to bring compensation paid to police families bereaved before 1982 into line with those bereaved after that date.

In recent years she has been an active member of the RUC George Cross Foundation. This organisation helps police officers hurt or psychologically damaged during the Troubles and the relatives of murdered and injured officers.

A former primary school teacher, she has also has a background in cross-community educational initiatives. She worked for a time for the Northern Ireland Council for Educational Development where she was a co-ordinator for Education for Mutual Understanding which seeks to give Catholic and Protestant school children a better understanding of each other’s faith and beliefs.

As commissioner she will have the task of setting up a new “victims and survivors” forum for those who suffered in the Troubles. She will be expected to report on what further initiatives are needed. An early test will be whether she can command the confidence of all victims, including those injured by the security forces.

Last night Alban McGuinness of the SDLP said: “We were not consulted about this. It does not strike me as a very imaginative appointment but we will wait to see what she is like.”

Anne Boal, of the Disabled Police Officers’ Association, said: “I am a bit surprised because I thought it would have been an more independent person. I don’t know if other victims groups will welcome the appointment and it may take a while for her to be accepted across the board, but we wish her well and I think she will be capable.”

Mairead Kelly, who represents the families of IRA members shot dead by the SAS during an attack on Loughgall RUC station, said: “I would be worried about how impartial she would be to the likes of us but I wouldn’t want pre-judge her either.”

• A study to be published tomorrow shows that more than 54% released loyalist and republican prisoners felt it was easier to deal with life in jail than outside it.

  The University of Ulster research shows that many former UVF and IRA inmates from Belfast suffer from physical and psychological illnesses and have problems with personal relationships. They are stigmatised by their jail records when it comes to finding work or adopting children.

  Peter Shirlow, one of the researchers, said that loyalist prisoners were more likely to be rejected by the community on release than their republican counterparts. However, republicans had a 40% unemployment rate compared to 29% for loyalists.

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