Allister challenges DARD on IRA monument
20 February 2012
TUV Leader Jim Allister has challenged Sinn Fein DARD Minister, Michelle O'Neill, to say if her department is currently considering a grant application, said to run to £30,000, to include spending Rural Development funds on refurbishing the IRA monument in the Square in Crossmaglen.
Commenting Jim Allister said, "Such would not only be an outrageous misuse of public money, an abuse of the Rural Development funding, but utterly divisive and incompatible with the department's equality obligations. This monument celebrates sectarian murder by glorifying IRA members who made the savage killing of security forces and local citizens, such as those at Kingsmills, Darkley, Whitecross and Tullyvallen, their evil stock and trade.
"Michelle O'Neill must come clean on whether she and her department are presently considering such an application and, if so, let her urgently declare that it will not be approved. Any other decision would be monstrous. Measure 3.6 of the RDP exists for the "conservation and upgrading of the rural heritage", not for the glorification of terrorism."
