O'Dowd meets with police on flags issue

“Sinn Fein is concerned at what appears to be a deliberate attempt to raise community tension within the Banbridge area,” said the Upper Bann MLA.

“We met separately with the council’s chief executive and Good Relations Officer and with Chief Inspector Mawhinney and Inspector Gillespie in order to voice our concerns and to familiarise ourselves with both the council and PSNI perspective on the situation.”

Mr O’Dowd said the council had in place a long-term policy for dealing with contentious issues, including flags, and - working in conjunciton with the PSNI - had made major progress over the last few years.

“There is undoubtedly a lot of work still to be done and the completion of this work requires rational thinking, persistence and respect for each other’s views,” said Mr O’Dowd. “Unfortunately, it appears that there are still a small number of individuals on both sides who are more interested in protecting their own vested interests than they are in developing an equal and harmonious community.”

Mr Curran praised the mature attitude adopted by the political parties represented on council but was scathing of the “reactionary comments” made by a few political representatives.

“Comments from some political representatives, who were obviously not aware of the full facts of the situation, were less than helpful and I would appeal to these individuals to think rather than react before they make public pronouncements,” said Mr Curran. “No one who respects their flag would use it to mark out territory or to create community division and they certainly wouldn’t use it for political point scoring.

“There is an equality issue involved in the displaying of emblems but that does not give anyone the right to abuse any national flag and it certainly does not give those who claim a particular flag the right to disrespect it.”