Agreements are bad news for Lagan Valley

Initially some may feel that this should be welcomed because at long last something seems to be happening at Stormont. However, the reality is that these ‘agreements’ are bad news for Northern Ireland and Lagan Valley in particular.

No wonder they decided to announce them during the recess when there is no opportunity to be questioned on the floor of the Assembly.

The agreement on the appointment and composition of a Chair and Board of the Maze Development Corporation is of particular significance. This marks a significant step towards the establishment of an IRA visitor centre in the heart of our constituency.

A Sinn Fein MLA recently told the Assembly he believed that the Maze had the potential to be a tourist attraction similar to Kilmainham Jail in Dublin.

Anyone who has visited Kilmainham will know that it is a shrine to the 1916 rebels who were executed inside the walls of the jail.

No one should be in any doubt that that Sinn Fein/IRA want to see a similar shrine to the hunger strikers at the Maze.

Local Unionists need to come out and state publically where they stand on this issue. There is simply no appetite for a Mecca for terrorists in this overwhelmingly Unionist constituency. Does our local MP back the First Minister’s agreement with McGuinness or does he support the comments of his leader in the House of Commons, Nigel Dodds, who stated: “However it is dressed up, whatever spin is deployed, the preservation of a section of the H-Blocks — including the hospital wing — would become a shrine to the terrorists who committed suicide in the Maze in the 1980s. That would be obnoxious to the vast majority of people and is something unionist people cannot accept”?

Samuel Morrison

Press officer, Lagan Valley TUV