Ó Caoláin: IRA a bulwark against dissident republicans

SINN FÉIN’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin has suggested the IRA represents a bulwark against the growing dissident republican movement.

Speaking in the Dáil yesterday, Mr Ó Caoláin said dissident republicans were attempting to create the impression that dissolution of the IRA army council would be “the panacea for all the difficulties on the island of Ireland”. The dissidents were doing this so that they could step into the vacuum that would be created by the IRA’s removal.

Mr Ó Caoláin was responding to claims made by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny about crime levels in the border region of South Armagh. Earlier this year, Mr Kenny met with the family of Paul Quinn, the 21-year-old who died last October after being beaten by up to 12 persons in a cattle shed near Castleblayney, Co Monaghan.

Following that meeting, Mr Kenny claimed in the Dáil that current or former IRA members were involved in the attack. He revisited the issue yesterday during questions to the Taoiseach, saying that if the peace process was to work, “we do not need a structure like the army council of the Provisional IRA”.

Mr Kenny added: “I made that point based on evidence given to me by people living across a broad swathe of the South Armagh border region where, on a continual basis, punishment beatings are being carried out in apparent accordance with that particular structure.”

But Mr Ó Caoláin told the Dáil Mr Kenny had fallen victim to the agenda being pushed by dissident republicans.

“Will the Taoiseach, Deputy Kenny and others not consider for a moment that this is exactly what dissident republicanism want them to do? Will they ponder the possibility that the IRA, in whatever way it exists today, represents a bulwark against dissident advance in many areas on this island, not least in the border counties in the North?”