The husband of a woman killed in an IRA bombing today branded "offensive" a Sinn Féin dinner in Dublin eulogising its Republican dead.
Mr Alan McBride, whose wife Sharon was among nine civilians killed in a bomb attack on a fish shop on the loyalist Shankill Road that also killed an IRA member, condemned a dinner organised by Sinn Féin for 2,500 people on Saturday.
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"I definitely think that this thing at the weekend, with the expense that was lavished on it, offends me. I mean one of the people that was being commemorated, I am sure, was Thomas Begley who murdered my wife in on the Shankill Road in a fashion not unlike the suicide bombers in Palestine".
Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams paid tribute to IRA and Sinn Féin members killed during the troubles. He praised the "extraordinary calibre" of IRA members and claimed their cause was noble.
Mr Adams's comments angered unionists and moderate nationalists. SDLP Deputy Leader Ms Bríd Rodgers accused Mr Adams of "repulsive revisionism" about the IRA.
The nationalist Agriculture Minister in the Stormont Executive claimed a lot of people would have been appalled by Mr Adams remarks, accusing him of glorifying IRA violence.
"What was glorious about the murders of innocent civilians in Belfast, London or Claudy?" she asked. "What was glorious about the murders of workmen on their way home from work?"
Democratic Unionist Party leader Reverend Ian Paisley, speaking in the Stormont Assembly, condemned the Sinn Féin salute to the memories of dead IRA volunteers.
He attacked Mr Adams for "talking about the noble cause which drove many to their graves and made widows and orphans throughout the whole Province".
Deputy First Minister of the power-sharing Executive Mr Mark Durkan said the weekend event demonstrated a clear linkage between Sinn Féin and the IRA that on other occasions the party was at pains to deny.
"All of us need to do more to show the fullest possible sensitivity to all the victims that have been created by the violence we have had over the past generation," he added.
Ulster unionist Environment Minister Mr Dermot Nesbitt accused the Sinn Féin leader of "living in the Europe of the 1930s".
PA