The father of a victim of the Omagh bombing has criticised Newstalk's new satirical comedy The Emergency for including the Continuity IRA in a spoof of TV's Dragons' Den.

Aired on yesterday's show, the sketch featured two members of the Continuity IRA approaching the Dragons representing the world's leading terrorist organisations looking for investment in a re-usable bombing device.

The sketch had initially been planned to appear in the debut edition of the comedy aired last weekend but was re-scheduled in the aftermath of two separate attacks by the Real IRA in the North in which two British soldiers and a PSNI member were murdered.

However, the decision to go ahead with the sketch has been greeted with dismay by the father of Omagh victim Michael Gallagher who lost his only son Aidan (21) in the Real IRA attack on 15 August 1998.

"I can understand the subject of the Real IRA is very prominent at the moment but I would warn the writers and producers of this programme they could be sending out the wrong message to these people.

"We have to be very careful when we are dealing with an organisation that's willing to take human life and I would be very concerned that this might be publicity for the Real IRA which in turn would give them energy and credibility."

Joe Taylor, who is an actor and writer in The Emergency said: "We wrote this as a reaction to all the crap starting up again. It was just to show how stupid they are, that they could show up with a reusable bombing device. They're called 'Freedom Pants' and made up of two galvanised buckets which enable the terrorist to fill his trousers full of semtex and then hop out of it after they blow up.

"We pulled it from last week's show because the funerals were still taking place and we thought it too close to events. That allowed us to rewrite it for this week and switch it around so it wasn't such a knee-jerk reaction."