O'Neill says 'we have right to honour dead' after Mary Lou MacDonald comments

Sinn Fein Vice President Michelle O'Neill has said everyone should have the right to remember their dead when asked if she will IRA commemorations as Northern Ireland's First Minister.

Ms O'Neill made the remarks following her party's president Mary Lou McDonald suggestion that she would not attend such commemorations if she became Taoiseach.

It comes after North Belfast MP John Finucane attended a remembrance event for the IRA in South Armagh at the weekend.

"I think that it is important that whenever we take up the role of a Taoiseach or a First Minister that we represent everybody certainly my commitment is to represent everybody equally in our society," Ms O'Neill told press on Thursday after meeting the head of the civil service.

"In anything I do in the role of First Minister will be in that spirt and in that vain, so I've said in deeds and actions that I will represent everybody in our society.

"I have attended Easter commemorations, I have laid a wreath at the battle of the Somme and I think it is really really important that we give each other the space to be respectful of our dead.

"We all have the right to honour our dead."

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