PRESS RELEASE : Diane Dodds challenges Michelle O’Neill to condemn IRA attack [November 2022]

The press release issued by the DUP on 22 November 2022.

The DUP’s Upper Bann MLA Diane Dodds has challenged Michelle O’Neill to live up to her own words and say that the IRA gunmen who entered the Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children were wrong and must be condemned.

Mrs Dodds said,

“Michelle O’Neill has stopped short of saying “Ooh Ah Up the Ra” was wrong but said the young woman who chanted “ooh Ah Up the Ra’ at Arlene Foster was wrong. Indeed Michelle O’Neill said;

“whenever things are wrong, we say they’re wrong.”

This statement is incredible. Sinn Fein time and again celebrate the IRA. No later than last Friday night Michelle O’Neill “honoured” an IRA gunrunner and convicted terrorist.

IRA gunmen entered the RVH Children’s Hospital to murder Nigel and I in 1996 and Sinn Fein has never said the gunmen were wrong let alone condemned their actions.

Will Michelle O’Neill now take that opportunity? Does she condemn the action of the IRA in the Shankill Bomb, the Enniskillen Bomb, the La Mon Bombing?

Michelle O’Neill must accept when she wrongly and misleadingly says there was ‘no alternative” for the IRA, that she is contributing to the mindset in young people who celebrate the IRA.”