Statement by TUV Bannside councillor and party treasurer Timothy Gaston:
“The eulogising of Rose Dugdale by numerous Sinn Fein members should give every democrat pause for thought about the character of those who have been elevated to the head of government in Northern Ireland.
“Dugdale’s bloodthirsty role as a weapons designer for the IRA resulted in the murders of many innocent people. Yet today Sinn Fein figures queued up to laud her as a “true Irish Republican” who had a “life well lived”. The fact that she spent much of it bringing premature ends to the lives of others was continently glossed over.
“It is rank hypocrisy for Michelle O’Neill to say that the tricolour shouldn’t have been placed on the coffin of Pearse McAuley on the same day that her party colleagues carried the tricolour draped coffin of Rose Dugdale. Why is it wrong to stab your wife as Pearse McAuley did but alright to blow up wives, mothers and daughters as Rose Dugdale did?”