Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams stand beside the coffin of IRA man Seamus McIlwaine
FIRST Minister Arlene Foster has spoken of the difficulties she is experiencing working with the deputy first minister Martin McGuinness.
She say it is because of his graveside oration at the funeral of the IRA gunman, she believes, tried to kill her father.
IRA gunman Seamus McElwaine was shot dead by the SAS in April 1986.
He was preparing to ambush a British Army patrol near Roslea in Co Fermanagh.
At his funeral two days later, Martin McGuinness described him as a “highly intelligent volunteer”.
Mr McGuinness said McElwaine was a “freedom fighter murdered by a British terrorist”.
He went on to say that he was a “saint”, when compared to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.
Mrs Foster said she believes it was Seamus McElwaine who had attempted to murder her father, John Kelly, in 1979, based on information provided to her family by police.
Speaking to the BBC’s Spotlight programme, she said: “It is quite difficult.
“If you talk to Martin McGuinness now, he will say that unionists aren’t the enemy, the enemy is poverty, the enemy is unemployment.
“And that’s fine, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that he thought it appropriate to speak at Seamus McElwaine’s funeral – a man who had been responsible for murdering many people in Co Fermanagh.”
She added that despite her personal difficulties, she would work with the deputy first minister because: “The past is the past”.
“What I want to do is to build a future that everybody in Northern Ireland can ascribe to,” she said.
Sinn Féin has declined to comment on the First Minister’s remarks.
This interview can be seen on Spotlight tonight, Tuesday, February 9, on BBC One NI at 10.45 pm
