UUP man: 'Dissident republicans are trapped in a past they cannot escape from - I have sympathy for them'

Tim Collins, a former Colonel in the Royal Irish Regiment who is now a UUP candidate for North Down, said the latest scene of a gunman firing over a tricolour-draped coffin shows Northern Ireland remains like “a broken record, just going round and round” where people just expect “more of the same forever”.

He was reacting to the footage widely circulated online ahead of the funeral of Gerard Moyna, showing three masked men on a terraced street, one of whom pulls out a gun and fires into the air in tribute.

• Police investigating video of gunshots fired over tricolour-clad coffin of Provo-turned-CIRA man Gerard Moyna ahead of west Belfast funeral today

The service in Belfast’s St Paul’s Chapel today heard tributes to his love of animals, sports, and “love of his country.

Unmentioned was the fact he was a notorious PIRA man who ended up a Continuity IRA bomber.

Scenes of masked gunmen paying homage to fallen volunteers “should have been done and dusted with the peace agreement” a decade-and-a-half ago, said Col Colins.

And whilst he envisages a day will come when paramilitary displays can be a thing of the past, “people have to vote for it”.

In the meantime those behind the latest republican show of strength “are trapped in a past they can’t escape from, and I’ve deep sympathy for them”.

Stewart Dickson, Alliance justice spokesman, condemned Moyna’s "horrific track record of murder and mayhem”.

Of the gun display, he said: “I do appreciate how difficult it is to live in a very tight-knit community where the fear of those who control those streets is there.

"But the reality is we’re never going to throw these people off the backs of our society unless people speak up.”