New calls to remove billboard after Lyra McKee-related graffiti

A Stormont committee has renewed calls to remove an unauthorised billboard after graffiti was scrawled on it in support of a man jailed for storing a gun linked to the killing of journalist Lyra McKee.

The billboard near Newry has been at the centre of a lengthy political row having previously displayed Sinn Féin branding and slogans.

Graffiti has since been sprayed on the structure calling for the release of Niall Sheerin, from Tyrconnell Street in Londonderry, who was jailed in 2022.

Infrastructure Minister Liz Kimmins has resisted calls from assembly members to remove the billboard, saying it posed a "low risk to road users".

The Department for Infrastructure (DfI) was approached for comment over the latest display.

Democratic Unionist Party assembly member Peter Martin, chairman of Stormont's infrastructure committee, urged the minister to take the billboard down.

Martin described the graffiti as "frankly appalling".

"My view is she should get some DfI staff down with angle grinders and take down the five posts that hold this billboard up," he told the committee on Wednesday.

Council planners are investigating the billboard, which is located on Camlough Road near the A1 Newry bypass.

It is sited across land owned by DfI as well as privately owned land.

The structure in previous years displayed Sinn Féin branding and slogans and in more recent months displayed a Christmas message about Palestinian children.

There is no suggestion the graffiti, first reported by the Irish News, is linked to Sinn Féin.

Ulster Unionist Party assembly member John Stewart said "time has long since passed" for the Stormont department to take action.

"Just get in, get it done and get it taken down and close the case," he said.

Alliance Party assembly member Peter McReynolds also called for the billboard to be removed, saying the issue had "taken up far too much time".

"We could be focused on much better things," he added.

The committee agreed to write to the minister, who is a Sinn Féin assembly member, to ask if she would instruct DfI officials to "take the whole billboard down so that this issue is finished".

Martin said he was "sure the minister will concur with the committee in terms of its disgust of what's up there" in relation to the billboard graffiti.

Lyra McKee, who was 29, was observing rioting in the Creggan estate in Derry when she was shot on 18 April 2019.

The dissident republican paramilitary group the New IRA has admitted the killing.

Sheerin was jailed in 2022, then aged 29, after admitting possession of a gun on dates between September 2018 and June 2020.

A judge at Belfast Crown Court said he believed Sheerin was an associate of a "serious terrorist gang who posed a danger to the public".

The judge said he was not sentencing Sheerin in connection with the murder, as the prosecution could not "establish to the requisite standard" he was aware of the specific history of the weapon.

For weeks the billboard has been at the centre of a Stormont row, with the infrastructure minister facing continued questions over the display.

The assembly heard DfI officials had contacted Sinn Féin in 2023 and in November last year requesting the removal of the billboard.

Kimmins last month told assembly members there was "no Sinn Féin billboard now and the issue has moved on".

The Sinn Féin minister also dismissed calls from other parties to remove the structure.

She said it was "considered to pose a low risk to road safety" and it "did not obstruct sight lines" for traffic.

Kimmins called for a "broader discussion" on regulation of displays rather than "single-item issues", pointing to concerns over flags and bonfires.