Adams shrugs off criticism and comes out fighting

Political Editor Harry McGee on the first shots in an election campaign.

It's the election stupid! With a slight distortion of one of Bill Clinton's more successful catchphrases, Gerry Adams adroitly kicked to touch the week-long criticism of his party and of the IRA.

While his denial last Thursday he was ever a member of the IRA may have reminded some of another long-lived Clinton phrase (in which the words never, sexual relations and that woman, all featured prominently), the Sinn Féin president was never going to allow the bombardment from his opponents steal any thunder from his major set-piece of the year.