Sinn Fein sign row: Liz Kimmins's department wrote to her office manager seeking its removal
The DUP chair of Stormont’s infrastructure committee says there are ‘significant questions’ for Liz Kimmins after he discovered that her department had written to her own Sinn Fein office manager seeking the removal of a billboard the party has claimed it doesn’t own.
Peter Martin has revealed that the infrastructure department (DfI) had written to the party three times, including to Councillor Aidan Mathers, who manages the minister’s MLA constituency office.
The MLA had submitted a Freedom of Information request to Ms Kimmins’s department, seeking details of who they had written to requesting the removal of the billboard at the Egyptian Arch in Newry.
The response revealed that all three enquiries were sent to Councillor Mathers – whose is listed as Liz Kimmins’s constituency office manager on the council’s register of interests.
A similar request by the TUV councillor Keith Ratcliffe uncovered emails which he says shows an expectation by DfI that SF would “arrange for all these illegal advertisements to be removed immediately”.
The issue was debated in the Assembly last month, when MLAs passed a DUP motion stating that the minister’s “failure to resolve this situation in favour of the public interest and rule of law represents a breach of the Ministerial Code”.
Liz Kimmins was heckled by MLAs when she said that there “is no Sinn Fein billboard” at the site in Newry during a Stormont debate last month. In recent correspondence, the minister said she had sought the removal of the billboard on two occasions, “once by email and once by letter” – but did not say who she had written to.
In its response to Mr Martin’s Freedom of Information request, DfI detailed three letters – two of which were during the period Ms Kimmins has been minister.
In August 2023 DfI Roads, Newry, Mourne & Down West Section Office sent an email to Cllr Mathers. On 5 November 2025, DfI sent an email to Councillor Mathers, enclosing a letter addressed to the Sinn Féin Constituency Office in Newry. Then on 25 November, it sent an email to Councillor A Mathers and Sinn Fein MP Dáire Hughes, “enclosing a letter addressed to the Sinn Féin Constituency Office in Newry requesting the removal of all illegal advertisements throughout areas of Newry City, and within the boundaries of the public road”.
Mr Martin, says the matter raises significant further questions for Liz Kimmins and SF.
“Liz Kimmins’s Department was not only writing to SF in relation to the billboard, but the correspondence was to her Constituency Office via her Office Manager. Given the direct link to the Minister and the potential for a significant conflict of interest, the public deserves to know exactly what role Liz Kimmins has played in the handling of this case.
“During the Assembly debate, Liz Kimmins made the ridiculous claim that ‘there is no Sinn Fein billboard’.
“Given that DfI have been writing to her office manager for more than two years on the issue, are we to assume that Liz Kimmins simply doesn’t speak to the staff she employs? That has about as much credibility as Michelle O’Neill claiming not to have seen a former staff member standing a few feet away from her.
“Even at its most basic level however, the public may ask, if the Minister doesn’t bother responding to letters from her own Department, then why should they?”
DfI declined to comment, and SF did not respond to a query from the News Letter.