DUP Education Minister and former First Minister Paul Givan has vowed there will be “no shrine” to terrorism at the former Maze Prison site.
It comes after it emerged that the organisation that runs Northern Ireland’s museums has been in talks with the body set up to redevelop the site over its future.
National Museums NI held a meeting with the Maze Long Kesh Development Corporation (MLKDC) back in April.
The BBC reports that minutes from the meeting state that a “draft partnership agreement” between the two bodies is “in development”.
Paramilitary prisoners were housed in the Maze during the Northern Ireland conflict before it was closed in 2000. It was the scene of the 1981 hunger strikes in which ten republican – including Bobby Sands – prisoners died.
More than a decade ago there were plans for a peace centre to be built on the site, until former DUP First Minister Peter Robinson quashed the idea amid concerns it could become a “terrorist shrine”.
Regarding its potential involvement in regenerating the site, National Museums NI said: “It is our understanding that the Maze Long Kesh Development Corporation has been tasked with exploring options for the future development of the site.
“Within that context we have discussed what, if any, role we could play in supporting the interpretation of and access to the heritage buildings, including the Second World War hangars and the prison buildings.
“This would be as an extension of our relevant work at our museums. However, any decisions on the future of the site rest solely with executive ministers.”
Alliance MP Sorcha Eastwood said, given the recent announcement by the Government of the planned establishment of Great British Energy, the site could “play a major role in green skills and upskilling people for jobs for the future”.
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Speaking to the BBC, Paul Givan said “inevitably there is a story to be told” regarding the site’s history, but there “won’t be a shrine at the Maze”.
“I come from this where my father served as a prison officer for 36 years, he worked in the H-Blocks with Provisional IRA prisoners, with loyalist prisoners,” he added.
“He was there during the hunger strike, he was there when Bobby Sands died.
“So I know personally, from my family, what was involved when you served in the Maze Prison – the threat that you were under.
“Our windows were blown out in our house, my dad checked under his car before every single journey. There never will be a shrine at the Maze because my party won’t stand for that.
“Of course there is a way to manage our past, but there will never be a shrine at the Maze Prison, that’s not going to happen.”
TUV deputy leader Ron McDowell said any suggestion a museum could be built on the site would “horrify innocent victims”.
In his ‘letter from America’ to DUP MLAs and MPs back in 2013, Peter Robinson said it would be wrong to go ahead with plans for a peace centre on the Maze site – despite his party previously supporting the move – in the absence of agreement as to how it would operate.