Ms O’Neill told the Covid-19 inquiry she accepts her attendance at the funeral at a time of lockdown measures limiting gatherings caused harm.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill has apologised for attending a large-scale funeral for veteran republican Bobby Storey during the coronavirus pandemic.
Giving evidence to the inquiry on Monday, Health Minister Robin Swann suggested it contributed to the public losing confidence in the Executive. “I’ve said it publicly on a number of occasions about how sorry I am and I am absolutely, from the bottom of my heart, sorry. Baroness Hallett said: “We didn’t find out about the partying until after the pandemic, what you did was to do something the normal bereaved couldn’t do because you wanted to go to a friend’s funeral. Isn’t saying that what Boris Johnson’s government did was wrong sort of hypocritical?”
Baroness Hallett said she was pressing because “the point of principle is that those who set the rules should obey the rules, both in spirit and in the letter”.She added that she attended the funeral on a personal invitation, with a cortege of 30 people. The Sinn Fein MLA accepted she should not have gone to the funeral during lockdown and apologised to the families who lost a loved one.
However, Ms O’Neill was then criticised for her apology not including an admission that she had been wrong to attend the funeral when strict limitations on public gatherings were in place.
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