Sinn Fein has voiced concern that the Government is withholding legacy inquest funding in Northern Ireland as a way of punishing the party for the Stormont deadlock.

Party president Mary Lou McDonald said the money must also not be used to “entice” parties back to the negotiating table.

Ms McDonald branded the failure to release £10 million for historic coroner’s probes as an “utter disgrace” as she and party colleagues attended the second week of the inquests into the shooting of 10 people in the Ballymurphy area of west Belfast in 1971.

While the Ballymurphy probe is now under way at Belfast Coroner’s Court after years of delay, others remain jammed in an under-pressure system.

In 2016, Northern Ireland’s Lord Chief Justice, Sir Declan Morgan, proposed that a specialist unit be set up that could deal with the cases within five years.

However, politicians have so far failed to agree to stump up the £10 million needed to fund the process.

The issue has become caught up in the wider political deadlock at Stormont. The DUP has insisted it will only back the release of the funds as part of a wider package of mechanisms to deal with the legacy of the conflict.

The party believes that as many of the inquests touch on alleged state involvement in historic killings, to only fund those probes would result in a disproportionate focus on the conflict.

The UK Government has previously claimed it will only release the funding if a formal request came from both the DUP and Sinn Fein.

Earlier this year, a judge in Belfast ruled that DUP leader Arlene Foster’s decision to block funding – by not agreeing to request the funds – was unlawful and flawed.

A month earlier, Sinn Fein claimed the Government had committed to release the cash as part of an ill-fated draft deal to restore powersharing at Stormont.

Ballymurphy inquest
The victims of the Ballymurphy Massacre (Ballymurphy Massacre Committee/PA)

After Monday’s hearing in the Ballymurphy case, Ms McDonald and other senior party figures called for the money to be released without delay.

“We regard it as a matter of utter disgrace that families, that survivors have been left for decades without the basic democratic entitlement of an inquest,” she said.

“We regard as a disgrace that Mrs [Theresa] May and her Government continues to withhold funding for legacy inquests.

“We have said to her, to [Northern Ireland Secretary] Karen Bradley and we say again that no leader, nobody who claims any regard for the upholding of the law or the value of democracy could stand over such a situation where families are left for decades without the right of an inquest.

“This shouldn’t be regarded as a punishment to political parties for not reaching agreement or indeed as an enticement back around the negotiating table – these are basic, fundamental rights and if Mrs May, the British Prime Minister, considers herself to be a democrat, to have any interest in upholding the rule of law and democratic values then she will immediately move to release that funding with absolutely no strings attached – no preconditions.”

The Ballymurphy shootings took place as the Army moved in to republican strongholds to arrest IRA suspects after the introduction by the Stormont administration of the controversial policy of internment without trial.

Soldiers have long been held responsible for the Ballymurphy killings between August 9 and 11 1971, but the accepted narrative became clouded earlier this year when former members of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force came forward to claim their organisation was also involved.

Ms McDonald praised the Ballymurphy families as “heroes”.

“I believe and I very much hope that this process will tell the truth, will tell the world the full truth about all their loved ones that were lost, that were taken from them,” she said.

“That history will record that these people were innocent, that these people were not, as conveniently depicted, gunmen and gunwomen – they were citizens with full rights who had a right to enjoy their full lives and that right was taken in murderous fashion by the British Army.

“We regard them [the families] as heroes of truth telling, heroes of justice, heroes not just of nationalist Ireland but Irish people everywhere who know that suffering was felt, who know that wrong was done, who know that your loved ones names were blackened deliberately.

“We hope now and stand with you now on your final lap of your journey to truth.”