SF minister approves IRA statue funds
�Press Eye Ltd Northern Ireland - 19th November 2011 Mandatory Credit - Photo-Jonathan Porter/Presseye. Traditional Unionist Voice party conference at The Royal Hotel in Cookstown, Co. Tyrone. Party leader Jim Allister gives his speech.
PUBLIC funds could go to renovate an IRA memorial, Agriculture Minister Michelle O’Neill has confirmed.
The Sinn Fein minister last night said that she has approved funding the controversial Crossmaglen statue which sits in an area where the IRA carried out some of its most barbaric and sectarian murders.
It is believed that the monument, which was erected in the 1970s, may be in line for up to £30,000 of taxpayers’ money.
Last night Ms O’Neill was accused of a “monstrous” decision by TUV leader Jim Allister, whose questioning elicited the information.
The funding application is to come from the agriculture department’s ‘Rural Development funds’.
When asked about the situation yesterday, Ms O’Neill said in a statement issued through her department that she had approved the monument as “eligible” for funding but said the final decision would be taken by a group which distributes money on behalf of her department.
“My officials have advised that the project appears to be eligible within the terms of Measure 3.6 subject to rigorous assessment,” she said.
She said that the project was being assessed by the Southern Organisation for Action in Rural Areas (SOAR), a group which involves Craigavon, Armagh and Newry and Mourne councils, and that it would take a final decision on the funding.
The Sinn Fein minister said that the application had come from the “Crossmaglen Memorial and Heritage Committee” as a request for funding from monies set aside for “the conservation and upgrading of the rural heritage”.
“The proposed project from the Crossmaglen Memorial and Heritage Committee is for the preservation, updating and completion of a monument located in the square in Crossmaglen.
“This involves the addition of several plaques to the existing monument. The wording of the plaques relates to the background and siting of the monument, and information about the sculpture.”
Ms O’Neill said that there had been no previous applications to the Department of Agriculture to fund the monument.
Mr Allister said that if the funding is approved it “would not only be an outrageous misuse of public money, an abuse of the Rural Development funding, but utterly divisive and incompatible with the department’s equality obligations”.
He added: “This monument celebrates sectarian murder by glorifying IRA members who made the savage killing of security forces and local citizens, such as those at Kingsmills, Darkley, Whitecross and Tullyvallen, their evil stock and trade.
“Michelle O’Neill must come clean on whether she and her department are presently considering such an application and, if so, let her urgently declare that it will not be approved. Any other decision would be monstrous.
“Measure 3.6 of the RDP exists for the “conservation and upgrading of the rural heritage”, not for the glorification of terrorism.”
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Tuesday 29 May 2012
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