Below are Jim Allister’s comments in the Assembly today on the HMICFRS inspection of the PSNI’s handling of the Bobby Storey funeral:
“The report was a whitewash, and it was never intended to be otherwise. Anyone who listened to the interview of Mr Parr on ‘The Nolan Show’ this morning could have no doubt about that. Here was a man, under interview, who said some amazing things. Of course, the starting point of what is amazing is the primary conclusion that Sinn Féin might was more important on the day than the COVID regulations, which were not just secondary but a very distant third to the thought that might was right and might would prevail. This morning, you heard Mr Parr effectively say that matters were delegated to an IRA events company, the name of which he would not give. He would not say whether the company was licensed; indeed, he may never have inquired. When you hear that a gold commander ordered that a helicopter should not oversee the wake event, where hundreds of people were gathered, and that the video cameras were so far back that the footage was useless, the conclusion is inescapable: the streets of west Belfast were deliberately, consciously surrendered on the day of the Storey funeral.
“The contrast is not with what would have happened at a loyalist funeral; the contrast is with what happened at the funerals of ordinary folk, who were deprived of the basic rights that attend a funeral and were required to obey. When it came to Sinn Féin, however, it called the shots. There might not have been any shots over the coffin on that occasion, but there were certainly shots called by Sinn Féin. We had the despicable scene of our compliant Chief Constable toadying to all of that. What he did on that day means, in my book, that confidence in him is incapable of ever being restored.
“Then we discover that the rules were changed by the Executive the night before. That is another story altogether.”