A Co Down GAA club says it had no knowledge and did not approve the advertising of an event remembering an IRA member, which it is claimed will take place on its premises.
The executive committee of St Malachy’s GAC in Castlewellan did not agree to the posting of the event billed as ‘The Paul Magorrian Story’, purportedly planned for the 50th anniversary of his shooting dead by the British Army in August.
Magorrian (21) was shot dead in disputed circumstances in the St Malachy’s estate in Castlewellan. The army claimed he was aiming at gun when he was shot dead.
The local Betsy Gray Sinn Fein Cumann posted an online flyer for the event on social media. A victims’ group criticised the holding of the event and said it would be writing to Ulster GAA.
However, in a statement, the club said: “The event recently published on social media purporting to take place on 16 August 2024 in Castlewellan GAC was posted without the knowledge, agreement, or approval of the Executive Committee of St.Malachy’s GAC Castlewellan.”
Sinn Fein has been contacted to check whether the party is directly involved in organising the event.
The South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF) , responding to the flyer, said the event was “highly political designed to recondition society that the Provisional IRA’s campaign of terror was unavoidable, understandable and also justifiable”.
“That lie must be challenged with robust arguments of analysis of the facts,” the organisation’s head Kenny Donaldson said, adding it was “just another step in the effort to cleanse systemic terrorists of their sectarian and ethnic motivated campaigns of hatred against their own neighbours”.
Mr Magorrian was shot dead on August 14, 1974, with Sinn Féin previously stating he was “a valued and respected member of the local community”.
Following the erection in 2022 of a stone in his honour, the party said: “Everyone has the right to remember their dead with dignity and respect under the Good Friday Agreement.”
Sinn Fein MP Chris Hazzard’s constituency office in the town is also named in honour of Mr Magorrian and Peter McNulty, a 47-year-old IRA member who died in 1972 after a bomb he was placing outside the local RUC station exploded prematurely.
Mr Hazzard previously said the pair were killed in the area and the families “are held in the highest regard”.
He added: “I would also point out that less than 50 metres from this office there is a British war memorial to remember all those that gave their lives in a British uniform, some of whom in that uniform killed Paul Magorrian who was killed beside my office by a British soldier.”