Ahern rejects claim garda killers were within hours of release

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern yesterday rejected an assertion by Sinn Féin’s Martin Ferris that the Government came “within an hour” of releasing the killers of Garda Jerry McCabe.

Mr Ahern agreed that the release of the killers would have formed part of the sequencing if an agreement had been reached between the two Governments, Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party in Hillsborough Castle in October 2003.

“If we got a comprehensive agreement,” Mr Ahern said yesterday, “(the Minister for Justice) would have gone to the McCabe family, as we had set out in the Dáil. That did not happen.”