'Terror-link' parties to lose funding
The IRA’s continued paramilitary violence will cost Sinn Féin £120,000 (€180,200), it was confirmed tonight.
Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy is poised to put an Order in Council through the House of Commons tomorrow imposing the sanction.
The money involved is the full annual block allowance of £48,000 (€72,100) the party gets from the British government towards running its Assembly party and the £3,000 (€4,500) paid to each of its 24 Assembly members.
A similar sanction is being made against the Progressive Unionist Party which speaks for the loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force.
It has just one member in the Assembly, David Ervine, and is to lose £24,000 (€36,000) in party funds and £3,000 (€4,500) more paid to Mr Ervine.
The move follows the publication of the Independent Monitoring Commission report last week which highlighted the levels of continued paramilitary activity by both republican and loyalist groups.
It was triggered by the alleged abduction by the IRA of dissident republican Bobby Tohill from a central Belfast bar in February.
Recommending the financial penalties, the IMC warned it may in the future name and shame those leading Sinn Féin members it considers to also be in the IRA leadership.
The British government penalty comes in after Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams again today expressed the party determination to fight the IMC and said it was considering taking fresh legal advice.
Speaking after a meeting with US Special Envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, he said: “When we say we are going to oppose the IMC, be assured we are going to oppose it. The IMC is not really that relevant.”
Mr Reiss has a series of meetings with the Northern Ireland political parties including the Democratic Unionists in Belfast.
Deputy leader Peter Robinson stressed to Mr Reiss that it was critical the peace process was not held up by the inability of Sinn Féin to leave violence behind.
He said: “It is time that the democratic parties in Northern Ireland were not held to ransom by the actions of those associated with violene.”
Calling for even tougher sanctions than the financial penalties, he added: “The only way that organisations such as Sinn Féin will ever leave terrorism behind is when it is made clear that the other parties will not wait for them and give them a veto.”
Meanwhile, the review of the Good Friday Agreement chaired by the Irish and British governments resumed at Stormont after an Easter break.
Meetings with the parties were chaired by Ulster Secretary Paul Murphy and John O’Donoghue, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism.
However, with the DUP refusing to negotiate with Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionist Party boycotting the discussions, there was scant hope of a breakthrough on the horizon which would see the devolved power-sharing administration restored to Stormont.
The Northern Ireland Office said there had been “useful” exchanges between the governments and the parties on strands two and three of the Good Friday Agreement.
They involve the less contentious issues of North-South and East-West cooperation rather than the core issue of how the parties work together to run the province.
Sinn Féin Assembly group leader Conor Murphy branded the IMC report “disgraceful and discredited” .
Speaking after meeting the ministers he said that, in the light of the decision to go ahead with the imposition of penalties against Sinn Féin, he believed the review should convene a dedicated session to address the issue of breaches to the Agreement.
Mr Murphy insisted: “Sinn Féin are not in breach of the Agreement. Others are.”
The British government’s other penalty target, PUP leader David Ervine, was equally unimpressed with efforts to resolve the political impasse.
“The absurdity of the British government strategy is exposed, when in the light of the IMC report and one day before ‘punishment’ is meted out, we are invited by you to participate in dialogue about governance of this society,” Mr Ervine wrote in a letter to Mr Murphy.
