'It is obvious that Sinn Fein wants Northern Ireland to fail' says TUV as minister denies deliberately underfunding roads
It is “obvious” that Sinn Fein wants Northern Ireland to fail, the TUV has said.
The party made the comments today as Sinn Fein infrastructure minister Liz Kimmins dismissed the idea that she is allowing the Province’s roads to fall apart as “ludicrous”.
It comes a day after the UUP leader Jon Burrows made similar points in the Assembly.
Mr Burrows had said: “I need to deal with an elephant in the room, which is whether Sinn Fein is committed to promoting Northern Ireland and dealing with reconciliation or is promoting decline and division.
"I say that because Sinn Fein's conduct in recent months has been so consistently inept that one wonders whether there is a deliberate scorched earth strategy in place.”
In a statement today, the TUV said republicans spent 30 years “attempting to destroy Northern Ireland by way of the gun and the bomb”.
Today, Sinn Fein still has the breakup of the United Kingdom “as their core policy”, therefore “it is something of a statement of the obvious to say Sinn Fein want to show Northern Ireland to be a failed political entity.”
The party’s statement added: “TUV alone takes the position that, that being the case, they are not fit partners for government.
"What the UUP and indeed the DUP need to explain is why – in light of the obvious agenda of Sinn Fein – they sustain them as partners in government.
"This is a particularly pointed question given that all Unionist parties went before the electorate at the last Assembly poll seeking a mandate on the basis that everyone was united around the Unionist Declaration, which spelt out very clearly ‘unalterable’ opposition to the Northern Ireland Protocol.
"Unionists who sit round the Executive table do so knowing that they have a legal duty to implement the very Protocol which is driving a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.”
Speaking in the infrastructure committee today, DUP MLA Stephen Dunne said many of his constituents believe that Ms Kimmins “as a Sinn Fein minister, may be deliberately running down the state of our roads to potentially make a constitutional point”.
Ms Kimmins said the claim is “absolutely untrue”, adding: “I think it’s actually quite a ludicrous claim to make, and I think that, as I said earlier, the issues that we are seeing with our roads at the minute are not something that have only just happened.
“These have been reported on year after year...
“I’m a road user too, as are my family, my friends, our communities.
"I want to see that our road network is fit for purpose.”