Cameron: painful to work with ex-IRA leader

DAVID Cameron admitted he finds it “painful” to work with former IRA chief Martin McGuinness.

But the British Prime Minister insisted compromises such as the rehabilitation of the Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister were a “price worth paying” for peace.

His comments were later dismissed by Sinn Féin as displaying a lack of understanding of the peace process.

“I do find it painful that I now sometimes sit around a table with Martin McGuinness and I think about what that man did.

“But everyone has to come to terms with that because that is the price we are paying for peace, and it is a price that is worth paying because peace is so much better than the alternative.”

Sinn Féin MP for West Tyrone Pat Doherty said Mr Cameron’s comments showed a lack of understanding of the role of the Irish peace process and the Sinn Féin role in that.

Meanwhile, the former British Trade Secretary Norman Tebbit said last night that the victims of the Brighton bombing are as entitled to a public inquiry as those from Bloody Sunday.

Five people were killed when an IRA explosion ripped through the Conservatives’ conference hotel in 1984.

Norman Tebbit had to be rescued from the rubble and his wife, Margaret, was paralysed, but then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escaped uninjured.