Ahern 'assumed' Adams was IRA member

Bertie Ahern said today he always assumed Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams was a member of the IRA.

Mr Ahern said he would be surprised if Mr Adams had not been a member of the group, given his prominent role in negotiations involving the republican movement.

He said he did not know what Mr Adams’s current relationship with the IRA was, but people would be interested to know.

“I always assumed that he was (a member of the IRA), I think I would be surprised if he wasn’t.

“He hardly became one of the chief negotiators back at the time of Lenadoon if he hadn’t some fairly close association.

“But I’m not particularly interested in if he was or he wasn’t in history, what I’m more interested in is what is happening now.

“I think Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have a key role to play, they have moved the IRA and the republican movement from a situation where they were deeply embedded in violence and brought them fairly close to the path of peace and political stability.”

Mr Adams has always denied he was ever a member of the IRA.

Mr Ahern said the interesting question would be who was on the IRA’s army council at present. “I don't know that,” he added.

Mr Ahern held talks with a Sinn Féin delegation in Dublin yesterday following allegations that the IRA were behind the kidnap of dissident republican Bobby Tohill in Belfast at the weekend.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble has threatened to take his party out of the review of the Good Friday Agreement after the Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde said he was clear the Provisional IRA was involved.

However the group has claimed abduction was not authorised by its leadership, and Sinn Féin has also criticised those who have rushed to judgment about the incident.

Mr Ahern said he believed four fairly prominent IRA men were involved in the abduction and insisted all such activity must end.

“We have to move away from paramilitarism,” he said.