A Northern Ireland Office minister was under pressure tonight to publicly condemn a death threat to the chief executive of a council in the North.
Craigavon Council SDLP group leader Dolores Kelly said she was stunned that Northern Ireland Office (NIO) minister David Cairns had yet to break his silence on the threat issued to Francis Rock, the chief executive of her council.
Ms Kelly was commenting after councillors succeeded in requisitioning a special meeting of Craigavon Council for next Monday to discuss the threat which ordered Mr Rock to drop staff reorganisation plans.
The chief executive was returning with his family from holiday in South Africa on Monday when he learnt from a colleague he had received a live bullet in the post and a letter warning him not to inform the police of the threat.
The letter made specific references to Mr Rock's wife Grainne and his two daughters, aged two and six, and the family has since had to take stringent security measures.
Ms Kelly, who is an Assembly member for Upper Bann, was staggered there was still no reaction 48 hours after details of the threat emerged from the minister, whose portfolio includes local government.
"I am amazed the minister responsible for local government, Mr Cairns, has yet to comment publicly on this, despite being urged to do so," she said.
"If this were to happen in England and a chief executive of a council there were to be threatened in this way, I am certain Government ministers in Whitehall would be falling over themselves to condemn it.
"I think it is disgraceful when you think his ministerial colleague David Hanson has been giving interviews on a headstone for the Omagh bomb victims, which — don't get me wrong — is an important issue.
"And yet here is a civil servant whose life is under threat, his wife and children's lives have been and there is not a word from the relevant minister."
SDLP, Sinn Fein and independent councillors collected five signatures today to convene a special meeting of the council. Ms Kelly said it was regrettable that they had to do this in the absence of any such move by the Ulster Unionist mayor of Craigavon Kenneth Twyble.
"My party colleague, the deputy mayor Mary McAlinden, spoke to the mayor yesterday, asking that a meeting be called," she said. "He said he did not want to move without talking to the chief executive. "It is regrettable but necessary that some councillors have therefore had to go down the route of calling a meeting themselves.
PA