Gerry Adams attended Roselawn cemetery for funeral service of Bobby Storey - but 8 other grieving families were not allowed in as their loved ones were cremated

Speaking this morning on the Stephen Nolan show he also said that 61 people were allowed into the grounnds of Roselawn for the service.

Belfast City Council have disputed the number at the service.

“My Council colleague Sonia Copeland and I are meeting senior police officers tonirrow to discuss a wide range of issues including Roselawn and what happened” he said.

“On that day the same rules should have applied to other families,” he added.

“I had two funeral directors on to me yesterday seething with what happened with regards to the storey funeral”.

He added: “Let me be clear that I am not putting any of the blame on any of our staff at Roselawn who do a superb job. During the COVID-19 pandemic they have gone the extra mile. It just has been unbelievable.

“Those staff have carried on their responsibilities and their duties”.

He added: “We need to get the truth here for families and for rate payers,” he said. “There can be no cover-up here”.

Today the justice minister Naomi Long has said she hopes Michelle O’Neill will recognise “the harm done to the executive’s reputation” by her attendance at Bobby Storey’s funeral.

Naomi Long said Ms O’Neill had also damaged her own reputation.

The assembly is to debate a motion calling on the deputy first minister and the finance minister to apologise.

Earlier Belfast City Council apologised after details emerged about how it dealt with Bobby Storey’s family at Roselawn crematorium last week compared to other families.

The council said that the family was the only one allowed into Roselawn on Tuesday for a cremation.

Eight other families were not allowed in as their loved-ones were cremated.

The council said this was an “error of judgement” and has sent an apology to all of the families affected.

New regulations, which came into force last week, allowed up to 30 people to gather outdoors.

However, at the crematorium on Tuesday, only the Storey family was allowed to take advantage of the change.

In a new statement on Monday, following an investigation by Radio Ulster’s The Nolan Show, the council gave more details about what happened.

A council spokesperson said: “An operational decision was made that for cremations the new procedures would apply from the cremation of Bobby Storey onwards.

“We accept in hindsight that this was an error of judgement.

“This meant that only one of the nine cremation services on Tuesday had 30 people in attendance, there were four burial services and these burial services had up to 30 in attendance; there were eight cremation services affected.

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