Sinn Féin urged to end ‘overlap’ with the IRA
“The Sinn Féin leadership has got to climb out of denial, that’s taking us nowhere,” he told a meeting in Cork last night.
The denial of a link with he IRA was evident in every statement Sinn Féin makes “and with every denial they are very quickly reaching a point where they can’t go on, the hole is getting deeper, and now they really have to stop and climb out of that hole of denial,” he said.
Mr Donaldson said he welcomed the decision by the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, to state without Dáil privilege that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Martin Ferris were all members of the IRA Army Council.
“This did not surprise me as we in the DUP have been aware for some time of the membership of the army council.
“I think it is significant that the Minister for Justice should publicly name some of those senior Sinn Féin representatives and do so without the cover of Parliamentary privilege, which I think demonstrates just how confident the Minister for Justice is that the information he has to hand is accurate,” Mr Donaldson added.
He also observed that the comments came in the wake of the report of the IMC which confirmed that senior Sinn Féin figures were involved in sanctioning the raid on the Northern Bank and other recent acts of criminality.
“I think the statement from the Minister for Justice confirms the view held by most, and that is that Sinn Féin and the IRA continue to be inextricably linked and there is a significant overlap between the leadership of both.”
The DUP was anxious, he said, to examine ways in which the peace process could be forwarded, “whilst the IRA sorts itself out.”
He stressed that there was “no going back” for the IRA in the aftermath of 9/11 and the consequent war on terrorism.
“Does anyone really believe that Sinn Fein/IRA is going to go back to exploding bombs in London and in other places? They would become international pariahs. Washington would close down to them.”
He added: “Is this the path the IRA wants to go down, do they want to drag us back to the past, because they can’t, and Adams and McGuinness know that.”
He also said the Republican movement knows that to return to a full scale campaign of violence would completely marginalise them politically North and South of the Border.
“The question we are all asking of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness is where are you going here, where is this taking you, what is this all about, what did you want £26.5 million for, what was that money going to be used for, we need to know that, that’s why we need honesty instead of the denials that we have had.
“We need to know are they going to continue to engage in this kind of criminal activity, and if they are, this will have serious consequences for their involvement in the political process,” Mr Donaldson said.
Last night, Mr Donaldson and the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Micheál Martin took part in a forum for cross-community debate on some of the most important issues of our time.
The debate, at the Silver Springs Hotel in Cork, on the North, was organised by the Munster branch of Fianna Fáil, and was chaired by the editor of the Irish Examiner, Tim Vaughan.
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