Northern Ireland's culture minister has criticised a decision by Sinn Fein to name a new Irish language group after a murdered IRA man.
Democratic Unionist Party Assembly member Edwin Poots said calling the body after Caoimhin Mac Bradaigh, an Irish speaker who was shot dead by a loyalist gunman in Belfast's Milltown cemetery 20 years ago, was a deplorable attempt to politicise the Gaelic language.
Speaking as he attended his first Irish language event since becoming minister 10 months ago, he said republican politicians were doing a grave disservice to genuine lovers of the language who were trying to promote it across the community in the north.
"I just think it's deplorable that we have a group that's about culture being called after someone who was engaged in a terrorist campaign," said Mr Poots.
"How would you encourage people in a unionist community to engage in such a group when it's called after someone who was engaged in terrorising that particular community for so many years."
Mac Bradaigh was killed in the Milltown Massacre in March 1988 when loyalist Michael Stone launched a gun and grenade attack on mourners attending the funerals of three IRA members who had been shot dead by an SAS unit in Gibraltar.
Yesterday Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams announced that one of two new Irish language forums being established by his party would be named after Mac Bradaigh.
Mr Poots responded to the move at a conference organised by Irish language umbrella group Pobal.
The minister has faced criticism from the sector after he rejected proposals for an Irish Language Act to protect and develop the Irish language.