Timothy Gaston: Covid report is latest feeble finding on the Bobby Storey IRA funeral mass breach which Michelle O'Neill led
A letter from Timothy Gaston MLA:
I secured a matter of the day at Stormont yesterday on the Covid inquiry report. I told the assembly:
Once again we are confronted with the latest feeble finding on what was, by any objective measure, one of the greatest scandals of lockdown: the IRA Storey funeral.
Let us remind ourselves what happened. While ordinary people in Northern Ireland were denied the right to stand at a graveside, denied the right to comfort their loved ones, and in some cases denied even the right to say goodbye, thousands gathered on the streets of Belfast for a full-scale republican show of strength.
Not a spontaneous act of grief — but a meticulously organised, tightly choreographed display of IRA power, with senior Sinn Féin figures at its centre.
And yet, time after time, report after report, the establishment has twisted itself into knots to avoid the obvious: that the law was applied differently depending on who you were; that republican leaders knew exactly what they were doing; and that the authorities would not confront them.
The latest finding simply continues this tired pattern of evasion.
The truth is this: Sinn Féin were flagrantly hypocritical, and at the heart of the breach — and everyone knows it.
Michelle O’Neill didn’t merely attend. She led. She posed. She set the example which thousands followed.
And then she claimed she “did nothing wrong”.
And what was the response of officialdom? No accountability. Just excuses.
This latest report tells us — once again — that no one can really be held responsible. But the public aren’t fools. They see what this is. They know exactly what it means when the law is flexible for some and rigid for others. They know what it means when senior republicans can breach restrictions with impunity while ordinary people were criminalised for far less.
This is a scandal about two-tier policing.
About rule makers who, in full view of TV cameras, became rule breakers.
About law-abiding citizens denied a basic funeral while a blood-soaked terrorist was given a grand send-off.
The fact that Lady Hallett now joins the long list of figures in officialdom who could not bring themselves to say so does her no credit.
In fact, it is a gross disservice to ordinary people.
Timothy Gaston, TUV MLA for North Antrim