O’Neill ‘will not be stepping aside under any circumstances’, says Sinn Féin

The party has responded to a call from the DUP for the Deputy First Minister to stand down amid claims of lockdown breaches at a Belfast funeral.

Sinn Féin has rejected a DUP call for Michelle O’Neill to step aside as Stormont Deputy First Minister over her attendance at an IRA funeral that drew hundreds of people on to the streets.

First Minister Arlene Foster wrote to her partner in government on Thursday telling Ms O’Neill to stand down pending a police and Assembly investigation into the scenes at Bobby Storey’s funeral in west Belfast on Tuesday.