Lessons of history - SF must not be shunned down south

TAOISEACH Bertie Ahern has stated that Sinn Féin deserves credit for totally renouncing violence. Hence, Fianna Fáil would accept the backing of Sinn Féin.

Because of the difference between the two parties in economic outlook, however, he ruled out any possibility of a coalition.

“We will not go in to a formal pact, either within government, or outside of government with Sinn Féin,” Mr Ahern declared on radio yesterday.

His pronouncement on behalf of Fianna Fáil seemed contradictory in the course of an interview in which he was arguing that Ian Paisley and the Democratic Unionists should form a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland with Sinn Féin. It would be a mistake for Fine Gael, a party that prides itself in its history to blame the Taoiseach for not ruling out any possibility of accepting Sinn Féin support.

In 1982 Fianna Fáil did not spurn the support of what had been Official Sinn Féin, and in 1994 Fine Gael went into a coalition with the same party, which subsequently merged with Labour.

Earlier, in 1948, Fine Gael went into coalition with Clann na Poblachta, whose leader Seán MacBride was Chief of Staff of the IRA little over a decade earlier.

If we are to be credible in arguing that there is no room for the old-style politics of contamination in the North, there should be none in the Republic either.