23-04-2025
- Politics
- Belfast Telegraph
MLA reports NI shop selling republican regalia to Trading Standards
Diana Armstrong, an Ulster Unionist MLA for Fermanagh-South Tyrone, said she has contacted Trading Standards about the store in Dungannon.
The store, Siopa 16 at Beechvalley Way in the town, is selling republican-themed items including coasters, prints, bodhrans and more.
Photos posted to the shop's Facebook page showcase bodhrans in support of the IRA's East Tyrone Brigade, memorabilia of high-profile IRA hunger strikers and copies of the 1916 Proclamation.
Some items contain the image of eight IRA men shot dead by the SAS at Loughgall.
The gang were killed as they mounted a gun and bomb attack on the village's RUC station in May 1987.
There is also an item bearing the image of IRA woman Mairead Farrell, who was shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988.
Diana Armstrong said the shop will cause unease across the community.
'I'm always one for promoting small business and entrepreneurship but the most recent addition on the Dungannon is one I will never support as it is nothing more than a shrine to terrorism and is deeply provocative to the whole community,' she said.
'The glorification and exploitation of well-known IRA terrorists who made no quarrel in murdering our kin is sickening and to stick them on a t-shirt or to don your shop with republican regalia is equally disturbing.
Police at the scene of ongoing security alert at Cavehill in north Belfast
'Many of the items on sale will cause unease across the community and will be profoundly hurtful to the victims of republican terrorism.
"I have urgently written to the Trading Standards watchdog seeking their intervention to see if this sort of trading is appropriate in Dungannon, as no paramilitary organisation should be promoted on our high streets."
