South Tyrone barracks closure long overdue

Sinn Féin MP Michelle Gildernew says the closure announcement of The Deanery British Army barracks just outside Clogher, South Tyrone, is long overdue.

The Fermanagh/South Tyrone representative said the British have failed to deliver the programme of demilitarisation that they committed themselves to in the Good Friday Agreement and in the many subsequent negotiations.

"It is only through intense lobbying at the highest level that we are now seeing some piecemeal progress," she said. "The British Government, and particularly the NIO, have frustrated progress on demilitarisation. Ten years after the first IRA cessation, there are still twice as many British Army soldiers here than there are in Iraq. This speaks volumes about the commitment of securocrats to the Peace Process.

"A decade after the cessations and six years on from the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, it is totally unacceptable that there are still so many British Army barracks and watchtowers, that there is still far too much military activity on the ground and in the air and that nationalists still have to live with British Army harassment and interference."