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DUP blocks £1m shared community centre over IRA names on gates

The proposed community centre in Glenariff has been delayed after council funding of £180,000 was pulled. Unionists have objected to the names of the two IRA men on nearby gates to the site.
The proposed community centre in Glenariff has been delayed after council funding of £180,000 was pulled. Unionists have objected to the names of the two IRA men on nearby gates to the site. The proposed community centre in Glenariff has been delayed after council funding of £180,000 was pulled. Unionists have objected to the names of the two IRA men on nearby gates to the site.

COUNCIL funding for a new £1m state-of-the-art community centre in Co Antrim has been pulled indefinitely because of a row over the names of two IRA men on the gates into the planned site.

The proposed new sports and community centre in Glenariff is due to be built within the grounds of Oisin Glenariff GAA club.

But opposition has been brought by the DUP members of Causeway Coast and Glens Borough Council.

Gates near the site bear the names Charlie McAllister and Pat McVeigh while the ground is named McAllister-McVeigh Memorial Park in their honour. The two IRA members were killed in 1922 - some seven months before the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

Planning permission was granted in March 2014 for the centre to cater both the social and sporting needs of the community.

The Friends of Glenariff had been working on plans for the shared community space for the past six years and applied to the council for £180,000 funding, which was approved at a council meeting last week, in spite of objections from the DUP.

The future of the project is now in jeopardy after DUP members decided to call-in the council's decision.

A council spokesman said: "Following the Council decision on 24th May 2016 to adopt a capital grants fund process and consequently part fund the Glenariff Community Facility, the DUP has invoked call-in, which now necessitates legal opinion in relation to the decision made by Council. Until the call-in process is complete the decision of Council is 'frozen'

The DUP has said the building of the centre in Glenariff would "re-traumatise" people affected by the Troubles.

Coleraine councillor Trevor Clarke said there were also 'procedural issues' as well as "very serious concerns" the project was being fast-tracked ahead of others.

"We will continue to have difficulty in supporting a facility which is connected or named after any terrorist or terrorist related organisation," he added.

Glens Sinn Féin councillor Cara McShane, who branded the move a "deliberate stalling tactic", said the DUP had "enraged people from all sections of the community".

SDLP Glens councillor and chair of the council's Leisure Committee Margaret Anne McKillop said she was "absolutely devastated" by the DUP's move.

"It is incredibly distressing for those of us who have pressed for this new development which would really lift the whole area," she said.

“A community facility like this should be beyond grandstanding.... Pressing the nuclear button at the last minute is a disgrace."

This is not the first time the council has been at the centre of controvery over the building of a community centre. In December unionists voted against a new £2.8m sports complex in Dungiven arguing it would leave ratepayers with a £339,000 shortfall. At the time Sinn Féin accused them of "going back to sectarian politics".

Work on the Co Derry facility, including halls, a gym and 3G pitch, had been due to begin in January.