McMullan is challenged on mandate

The DUP councillor said council policy on flags and Royal portraits was “a corporate decision”, adding: “I am more than perturbed that Oliver McMullan, who is not even elected to represent the area, is interfering in council business for the sake of electioneering.”

SDLP alderman Danny O’Connor said: “At one time this town was besotted with flags and it is all very well for people like Oliver McMullan looking in from the outside and thinking they can impose solutions on us.”

He added: “We (the SDLP) could have been dogmatic about the Union flag at Smiley Buildings, but it would have been a Pyrrhic victory because the day after it was taken down every street would be decked out in Union flags to prove a point.”

Ald Jack McKee described Mr McMullan as “a man from Cushendall who does not have to live with the repercussions of anything he says about Larne.”.

He was ”scurrying around from one issue to the next to see how he can get the pot stirred”, the TUV man added.

On dual language signs, Ald McKee said: “I have a message for him: Seacourt is 60 per cent Protestant and it will never happen. I want to tell him he is living in Cloud Cuckoo Land. He is an outsider trying to poke his nose in and he will not be accepted by the nationalist in Larne. I don’t speak for the nationalist community, but I know what makes them tick and what they want is peace.”

Ulster Unionist councillor Andy Wilson said: “Oliver McMullan does not reside in the borough and he was not elected by anybody in the borough and I would have to question what any of this has to do with him.”

In street signs, PUP chairman in East Antrim, Billy Adamson, commented: “A few people have raised this with me and my response is that the PUP have no problem with the Irish language per se – in fact, Gusty Spence is a fluent Irish speaker – but we would question the motives for asking for Irish language signs in the town of Larne.

“There would be no issue in places where there would be majority consensus, as in Carnlough, but I think that all the people of the Larne borough should be consulted and not just the residents of those streets that the applications refer to. There needs to be community consensus.”

Seacourt Community Council chairman Bertie Shaw said: “I think the people of Seacourt are mature and can see this for what it is and that is: marking out territory.”

The streets cited were the main arteries in the estate, he pointed out. “The question is why? We have a 2.3 million project at The Cliff almost ready to go and it is entirely dependant on all the communities using it, regardless of where they are from.”

Mr Shaw said: “A number of years ago, people maybe would have associated me with Irish street signs and things like that and I probably would have been up to my neck in it, but I don’t see that it needs to be the case any more.”