Adams to outline SF stance on Lisbon Treaty

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams will today address party colleagues at his first annual conference since devolution returned to the North.

The West Belfast MP’s leader’s address will also come 10 months after the party’s disappointing showing in last year’s Irish General Election.

Sinn Féin has been reconsidering its strategy in the Irish Republic and will be the only major party to campaign against the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty when it goes before the Irish people in a referendum.

Mr Adams is expected to reiterate his party’s criticisms of the treaty and also set out Sinn Féin’s support for the next step facing Northern Ireland’s politicians – the transfer of policing and justice powers.

At the opening of the Sinn Féin conference at the Royal Dublin Society last night Stormont Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness urged Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists to complete devolution by signing up to the May deadline for the transfer of policing and justice powers from Westminster.

Mr McGuinness, who commended the DUP for joining his party at the helm of the power sharing executive last May, called on Mr Paisley’s party not to break the May deadline simply for the sake of breaking a deadline.

Delegates at the Sinn Féin conference also heard criticism of the DUP by the father of a man killed by a loyalist gang riddled with police informers.

Wearing a Protestant Orange Order collaret Raymond McCord criticised Mr Paisley’s party for failing to properly address allegations of security force collusion in the North with loyalist paramilitaries.