LAST UPDATE | 14 May
NORTHERN IRELAND’S FIRST Minister Michelle O’Neill has apologised for attending a large-scale funeral during the coronavirus lockdown.
The then-deputy First Minister and a number of Sinn Féin ministers attended the funeral of senior republican Bobby Storey in west Belfast in June 2020 when there were restrictions on social gatherings.
Footage of large crowds gathered on the streets for the send-off sparked controversy at the time, and the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has heard evidence that it chilled relations within the Executive.
This included the ending of the joint Covid-19 press conferences with O’Neill and the then First Minister Arlene Foster.
Giving evidence to the inquiry yesterday, Health Minister Robin Swann suggested it contributed to the public losing confidence in the Executive.
Appearing at the inquiry this morning, O’Neill said she was sorry for having gone to the funeral, and sorry for the harm that was caused.
“I know that my actions also angered the families and for that I’m truly sorry. I am sorry for going and I’m sorry for the harm that’s been caused after (it),” she told the Covid-19 inquiry.
Asked if she realised the anger that going to the funeral would cause, she said: “I didn’t but I ought to have.
“I’ve said it publicly on a number of occasions about how sorry I am and I am absolutely, from the bottom of my heart, sorry.
“I do accept wholeheartedly that I in some way damaged our Executive relations with colleagues who had been working very hard with me the whole way through, and I also accept wholeheartedly that I damaged the public health messaging and I had work to do to regain that.”
Last week, former Communities Minister Carál Ni Chuilín gave an apology for attending the funeral while appearing at the inquiry.
She accepted she should not have gone to the funeral during lockdown and apologised to the families who lost a loved one.
“I am very sorry. I absolutely do see the impact and I also recognise that people were more than angry. I accept that and I really am sorry,” she told the inquiry last Wednesday,
In July 2020, O’Neill acknowledged some grieving families had been hurt by her actions, but said: “I will never apologise for attending the funeral of my friend”.
In April 2021, O’Neill offered a “heartfelt and unreserved apology” to families bereaved in the pandemic for her actions in relation to attending the funeral.
It came when the Assembly was recalled from Easter recess to debate a motion of censure against her.
O’Neill told MLAs she was “truly sorry” for the hurt caused to those who had lost loved ones.
However, O’Neill was then criticised for her apology not including an admission that she had been wrong to attend the funeral when strict limitations on public gatherings were in place.
O’Neill also blasted the Irish government for not telling Stormont in advance about its decision to close schools in March 2020.
O’Neill told the inquiry that the announcement of school closures in the Republic when schools in Northern Ireland remained open shook public confidence in the North.
Stormont followed advice from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) which changed to recommend the closure of schools later in March.
O’Neill said she was baffled that the advice around schools could be so different on either sides of the border.
She said the Irish government moving to school closures “precipitated a whole new set of circumstances”, and criticised Dublin for not telling Stormont about it as “not good enough”, and that it “put us all in a very difficult spot”.
“We live in a small island, two jurisdictions back to back, and particularly in relation to the issue of schools closure. Parents in Strabane couldn’t understand why parents in Lifford weren’t sending their children to school,” she said.
“It just didn’t compute in people’s minds, so much so that I just couldn’t understand it and I tried to understand from within the Executive, I tried to ask the CMO (chief medical officer) about the difference of advice.
“This was the first big issue that the public witnessed and experienced and people were afraid, and they couldn’t fathom how our advice could be different.”
The inquiry heard that O’Neill issued a public statement on 12 March saying Northern Ireland was not at the stage of needing to close schools, but on 13 March issued a statement as Sinn Féin vice president calling for the immediate closure of schools.
“In 24 hours, a lot had changed … we had lost the wider public, they were taking the children out of schools. The Catholic bishops had came out and asked for all schools to close their doors,” she said.
“We were very quickly rapidly descending into an unmanaged school closure. It was much better to do it in a managed way and that was why I felt obliged to speak out, and I couldn’t get that concerted agreement in the Executive itself, because the CMO had advised that we were not in the position to move to this juncture yet.
“I tried everything that I could to try to get people onto that right position where I thought … unfortunately, we couldn’t get to that juncture.
“It’s not ideal. But it was the only way in which I could try to influence the decision.
“Does my statement add to confusion? Yes, of course. Do I believe it was the right thing to do? Yes, I do because I felt like we had lost people.”
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