Two unionist councillors have hit back at Sinn Féin MLA Aoife Finnegan after she described a series of “Locals First” posters that appeared in Tandragee as “disgusting” and “designed to intimidate and create fear”.
Independent unionist councillor Paul Berry criticised the Sinn Féin MLA’s intervention, describing the posters as “a cry for help from the community” amid frustration over a lack of social housing investment.
He said: “Over recent years, in towns across Northern Ireland, the housing waiting lists have increased dramatically as a result of no investment in social housing. The last social housing scheme built in Tandragee was in 1985, so the Housing Executive and Stormont must sit up and listen to the communities.
“In fact, in the ABC area there are around 6,000 people on the waiting list for housing, so local houses for local people are a priority given their place of residence and birth — that’s not racist.”
Councillor Berry said concerns also existed about two buildings in the town that could become HMOs (houses in multiple occupation), adding that while many such properties were well-managed, “some have been a real nuisance” and that “over-intensification” was an issue in nearby Portadown.
He continued: “I live and work in the town and find it deeply offensive that the Sinn Féin MLA has labelled a section of the people of the town. We are not racist in any way — in fact, I know foreign nationals who have lived here for years and whose children attend local schools free from intimidation.
“These posters are part of the national crisis in relation to illegal immigration allowed to happen under the previous weak and spineless Conservative government. The UK Government spent £2.8 billion on asylum seekers in 2024 — totally outrageous when our hospitals, schools and roads are underinvested in.”
Councillor Berry said local people’s concerns had been “misrepresented”, adding: “The foreign nationals I know are my friends — they’re great, hardworking people who contribute massively to our community. There are no racist concerns in the town and everyone lives peaceably.
“The Sinn Féin MLA was very silent last week when the war memorial was damaged. Many people in Tandragee had to move from areas like south Armagh because of intimidation and attacks from Sinn Féin’s PIRA, so we take no lectures from Ms Finnegan on hate crime or creating fear. Tandragee doesn’t welcome your interference.”
Meanwhile, Cusher TUV councillor Keith Ratcliffe said it was “a bit rich for Sinn Féin to be reporting posters to the police when they continue to justify murder”.
He added: “I didn’t see Ms Finnegan rushing to the papers when actual criminal damage was done to a local war memorial. In fact, just the other week Michelle O’Neill refused to describe the Enniskillen Poppy Day Massacre as murder. That atrocity was designed to do a great deal more than intimidate and create fear.
“There are genuine concerns about migration, and I am glad that local people have chosen to articulate those concerns in a much more restrained and dignified way than Sinn Féin and their bedfellows in the IRA went about seeking to achieve their political objectives in the past.
“No one is going to take lectures on intimidation from the likes of Ms Finnegan — least of all in Tandragee, where we remember the sacrifice of Jimmy Hunter, a local RUC officer murdered by the IRA.”
Cusher DUP Councillor Alderman Gareth Wilson stated: “I have noticed in recent times a growing number of signs of all varieties being erected across the Borough and indeed further afield, with a great variety of messages on them from business advertising signs and of course wider political-themed messaging also.
“A case in point being the huge Sinn Fein political billboard erected without permission in Newry.
“On the wider contextual point of housing availability, it is very clear there is a lack of social housing and a much greater effort must be made to create new social housing in the ABC Borough.
“In my extensive work on public representation, this matter was brought very much to my mind this week as I spoke with someone who is living out of their vehicle whilst they desperately wait for suitable housing.
“This is not a sustainable situation and it really does require the renewed focus of government and a determination to resolve.”
