IRA monument 'offensive' - Kennedy
THE decision of a council in the Republic to honour five IRA bombers blown up by their own device in November 1957 has been slammed as "disappointing" by a UUP MLA.
Danny Kennedy made the comments after Enniscorthy Town Council in Co Wexford unanimously supported an application to erect a granite stone in the town.
Paul Smith, 19, from Bessbrook, and Oliver Craven, 19, from Newry, died alongside three others in an explosion in a cottage at Edentubber Mountain in Co Louth.
It is understood the men were on their way to bomb a target in Northern Ireland as part of the "border campaign" staged by the IRA during the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Sinn Fein Foyle MLA and coordinator of the party's Protestant, unionist, loyalist outreach group, Martina Anderson, spoke at an anniversary of the men's death in 2006.
Fine Gael's Tom Moorehouse said that, at the recent council meeting, he did not know what he was voting for.
"We get so many people asking for monuments, we must have more bits of stone around than any other council area," the councillor told the News Letter yesterday.
"This was an Irish name I didn't recognise, the vote was just by a show of hands so I supported it."
Cllr Moorehouse said at the next meeting of the council later this month he would consider opposing it.
"I did not know what it was about, we have to decide the wording at the next meeting so I will consider my position for then," he said.
"We do have the power to squish it if we want."
The proposed wording on the monument, which was given to the council as part of the application, will pay tribute to "those in every generation who played their part in the struggle for Irish freedom" and "To Vinegar Hill and Pearse columns glaigh na h-ireann and the internees".
Sinn Fein councillors at the meeting paid tribute to the "impeccable republican ancestry" of one of the men who can trace relatives back to the 1798 rebellion, while the chairman of the council Sean Doyle, who sits as an independent, described the deaths as "tragic".
Ulster Unionist Newry and Armagh MLA Mr Kennedy said: "Many unionists regard these republican memorials as offensive as they in some way honour the work of murderers and terrorists.
"Therefore it is very regrettable indeed that these memorials continue to be established.
"We would hope there would be political maturity to move away from the support of such memorials."
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Tuesday 14 February 2012
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