McDowell names IRA Army Council members

JUSTICE Minister Michael McDowell said Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams along with colleagues Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris were members of the IRA Army Council.

Mr McDowell said there were seven members of the council and that the IRA was increasingly trying to get involved in legitimate businesses - especially the communications industry.

Mr McDowell said many professions - solicitors, accountants and financiers - were also connected to the criminal operation north and south of the Border.

“Many people are sucked into it, some wittingly and some unwittingly,” he said, adding there was a “deep, deep dishonesty that goes to the very heart of the republican movement”.

But Sinn Fein chief negotiator Martin McGuinness made an immediate denial that either he or his party colleagues were on the IRA Army Council.

“It’s not true. I reject it completely. What he has alleged is totally and utterly false.

“I’m not a member of the IRA. I’m not a member of the IRA Army Council,” he insisted but admitted his past again, saying: “I was a member of the IRA many years ago.” He said these claims and the minister’s comments were untrue, were politically motivated and an attempt to criminalise Sinn Féin.

“Since the refusal of Ian Paisley to do a deal, Mr McDowell has taken the opportunity to criminalise our party in the bold tradition of Margaret Thatcher,” Mr McGuinness added.

Mr McGuinness was responding to comments made earlier on Today FM where Mr McDowell said there was no difference between the IRA Army Council and the Sinn Féin leadership.

“We are talking about a small group of people, including a number of political representatives who run the whole movement - we are talking about Martin McGuiness, Gerry Adams and Martin Ferris and others,” Mr McDowell toldToday FM.

He said there were seven members of the IRA Army Council who have already been named in public.

The Justice Minister said a British House of Commons probe had shown the Provisional IRA are in receipt of at least £10 million.

“As a movement they are trying to get into legitimate business to buy places where there is a big cash trade and launder money,” Mr McDowell said.

The Provisional IRA is also moving into the communications business and are very interested in local newspapers, the Justice Minister added.

Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde repeated his assertion that the IRA was behind the Northern Bank robbery.

Mr Orde said that £50,000 in new notes found at a PSNI country club in Belfast were planted by the provisional IRA. Mr McGuinness conceded the situation was serious, but said Sinn Féin would not tolerate any criminal links within its ranks.

“Neither Gerry Adams nor I would have anybody near us who was in anyway involved in criminality of any kind,” he said.

Soon after Mr McDowell made his accusations Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern said it was time the leadership of Sinn Féin came clean about their links to the IRA.

He said: “We are absolutely satisfied that the leadership of Sinn Fein and the IRA are interlinked ... they are two sides of the one coin.”

He reaffirmed Mr McDowell’s statement that garda intelligence had revealed that prominent Sinn Féin members had seats on the IRA Army Council.

“It was quite obvious to us from all of this intelligence that, in particular in recent times, there was an interlinking and inter-weaving of the situation from a decision point of view,” said Mr Ahern.

He also hit out at IRA links to cross-Border smuggling and robberies and said it was inconceivable to think the IRA was not involved in the Northern Bank robbery.