Statement by TUV deputy leader Councillor Ron McDowell:
“The suggestion that the cell in which furniture shop bomber Bobby Sands was imprisoned and the hospital wing in which he died could be opened as a museum will horrify innocent victims.
“It is nonsense for people like the DUP’s Paul Givan to suggest that there will be no shrine built on the site. There is no need to build anything because the buildings linked to Sands are already there! Importantly, when one looks at the successful application to list the buildings the linkage of the buildings to Sands and the hunger strikes was the key reason for the listing.
“To suggest that this would be a suitable location to tell the story of prison officers alongside that of the terrorists is for the birds.
“In the last few days – both at the West Belfast Festival and the home coming celebrations for Irish athletes in Dublin – we have again witnessed the celebration of terror with young people chanting in a way which was deeply offensive and re-traumatising for victims of the Provisional movement. The suggestion that the Maze could become a museum was condemned by many innocent victims eleven years ago – something which was the key reason for plan hitting the buffers and the DUP being forced to change course on the matter. Those victims still matter.
“Yes, the Maze holds potential given proximity to the M1 and scale of the site. However, the site would hold even greater potential if the prison buildings were levelled. Without that happening, the site is blighted.
“Those within the DUP who would seek to spin this – as Paul Givan did this morning – would do well to heed the words of Nigel Dodds who summed up the issue thus:
“However it is dressed up, whatever spin is deployed, the preservation 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.”
“With our youth recollecting the Troubles as people of my generation did the Second World War it is important to ensure the morals of society are not built upon a foundation of IRA horror”.