Armed UDA receive public tax money

The Ulster Defence Association (UDA) has been warned that Government funding will be stopped unless it decommissions its weapons. Assembly Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie told the UDA it had to choose between its arsenal of guns or the cash.
Margaret Ritchie now has the responsibility from her British direct rule predecessor, for a policy which provided public tax money to help the UDA, a British loyalist paramilitary group, in their process of transformation away from terrorism and crime. Reports suggest around €589,536 a year is given to the Ulster Political Research Group (UPRG) the group in charge of the change process.
But Ms Ritchie has now said that if the UDA wanted her to keep doling out the instalments of cash it needed to decommission its weapons now.
The minister, a member of the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP), issued her warning and said she had been alarmed at comments made by leading UDA figures that giving up guns was "not on the radar screens".
Minister Ritchie said: "If this funding is to continue, then the UDA has to decommission their arsenal. An integral part of a transformation initiative is decommissioning. As a minister I demand that they do that, the public demand that they do that."
Earlier this year direct rule ministers agree a deal which would give the UPRG £400,000 a year for three years to help move the UDA away from its paramilitary and criminal past. The cash is intended to fund community projects in British loyalist areas.
Ministers warned at the time the money would only continue if there was evidence of a reduction in UDA violence and criminality.
Ms Ritchie said she would not have agreed the funding if she had been in office at the time. She said she was having talks with the PSNI, the Independent Monitoring Commission and the Community Relations Council about the UDA and would be preparing a paper to take to fellow ministers in the Executive. "Suffice to say I expect the UDA and their political wing to make an announcement in relation to decommissioning - decommission all their guns - guns are not an integral part of any strategy to do with transformation," she said.

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Armed UDA receive public tax money