UUP Party Officer has expressed concern at the 'increased terrorist threat' posed by dissident republicans.

Kenny was responding to comments made by the Chief Constable yesterday when he said that; dissident republicans are inept but dangerous.

The Chief Constable indicated that Security was being stepped up across Northern Ireland in answer to the evolving security situation.

In a statement, Kenny said: "Last night, I travelled from Coleraine to my home at Crossmaglen and I was stopped on five occasions by Police check-points, it is clear that dissidents are planning further operations and I would ask the public to be patient and supportive of the efforts of the PSNI. Security check-points are designed to root out terrorist activity and the public must be prepared to experience some minor discomfort in the pursuit by our Police to crush terrorist activity at source.

"It is clear that there continues to be people within the community who have not understood or indeed, refuse to accept, the changed political and societal dispensation Northern Ireland has entered. There continue to be wreckers out there who are prepared to reap misery upon the Northern Ireland community.

"It is difficult to understand the mindset of those who wish to continue engaging in terror as a means of furthering 'so-called political objectives.' The reality is that the terror campaigns of their sister organisations before them were futile; they failed and achieved nothing but plunge this Country into civil strife.

"The Provisional Movement and its' political leaders have immense responsibility in all of this. Sections of their 'republican community have fractured' and this has happened because they promised that community the 'undeliverable for decades,' they used physical force republicanism as a means of trying to overthrow the Northern Ireland State, that failed and they need to face up to this.

"Northern Ireland's place within the Union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is now protected in International Law via the consent principle my Party, the UUP fought and won in the political settlement of The Belfast Agreement. It's time people got real, it's time people put their shoulder to the wheel in building Northern Ireland as a place where all people, irrespective of class or creed are given a quality of life which has been denied them previously, that should be the priority of all who claim to represent people," concluded Kenny.