Stormont’s Education Committee has saw MLAs clash over minister Paul Givan’s meeting with representatives of the Loyalist Communities Council (LCC).
The matter was raised at Wednesday’s meeting by Sinn Fein MLA Pat Sheehan.
At the meeting last week between the LCC and Mr Givan, members of the group raised their concerns over a “proposal to build an Irish language school in the mainly unionist area of east Belfast”, urging that it “should be stopped”.
At last week’s Education Committee, DUP’s David Brooks said neither he nor his party would be apologising for meeting with the LCC.
He added: “We are expected to sit in chambers with people who are from a republican background and have a history of violence.
“What I am getting quite sick of in terms of political discourse is this circus arriving every time there is engagement with LCC.”
Mr Sheehan, who was not in attendance at the committee last week, responded this week: “Rightly, concerns and criticisms were raised around that meeting.
“A number of other groups and individuals who are involved in the education sector, or where it’s cross-cutting with health, have requested meetings going back as far as February and haven’t been given that facility.”
Mr Sheehan referred to a previous session in the Assembly chamber on September 30 where he had been accused of “hypocrisy” by the DUP’s Jonathan Buckley for being critical of Mr Givan’s meeting with the LCC.
Mr Buckley had said Sinn Fein should “take the plank from its own eye before it casts aspersions on members who are committed to the rule of law”.
“The fact is we put ourselves in front of the electorate and we get a mandate from the electorate,” Mr Sheehan told members of the Education Committee.
“The people who were meeting the minister are unelected and, probably, in some cases, unelectable, so there’s a qualitative difference there.”
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DUP minister Mr Givan met the LCC, which includes representatives from paramilitary groups the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and Ulster Defence Association (UDA), on September 24.
The integrated Irish-medium school Scoil na Seolta is set to be housed on a temporary site on Montgomery Road in the Castlereagh area of east Belfast.
The Department of Education said Mr Givan had agreed to the meeting to discuss the RAISE programme and measures being undertaken to address educational underachievement in working-class loyalist areas.
Responding to Mr Sheehan, Mr Brooks added: “Where he’s talking about elements of criminality and involvement in drugs, anyone who’s involved in that activity I have no defence to make for them. I hope the law deals with them as it should.
“The LCC, in my understanding, is a body that is about helping those who want to transition within loyalism away from criminality to do that, and on that basis I’m happy to engage with them.”
Mr Sheehan said the Irish language body Foras na Gaeilge had been asking for a meeting with Mr Givan since February and had not been able to get one.
Committee chairman and Alliance MLA Nick Mathison said the committee had requested more information from Mr Givan about his meeting with the LCC.
Last week, a spokesperson for Scoil na Seolta said: “Our school offers a safe and inclusive environment for all children from across east Belfast. With over 100 expressions of interest from parents in the past weeks, we look forward to welcoming children through our doors soon.
“Our school is fully independent, sourcing its own funding, and has not relied on the Department of Education for any financial assistance.”