Dissident terror - Nip this cancer in the bud

It would be wrong to hope that we might escape from our past but surely it is not asking too much to be able to put it aside and concentrate on building a better future for everyone on this island?

We all know that for long periods our history was a litany of disappointment and too often injustice, displacement, oppression, occupation and sometimes atrocities far worse than are comfortable to recall.

That, however, does not mean it, and the hatred it can provoke and sustain, can continue to intrude into our present in unwelcome, undemocratic, unrepresentative, intolerable and predictably bigoted ways.

The events in Limerick on Sunday, which could be filed under half-witted buffoonery if they were not so very sinister and out of touch with the position of the vast majority of people on this island, unfortunately remind us that some people are still so blind, so self-absorbed, that they adopt positions that brings their perception of reality into question.

A Michael Kiely, from Corbally, Limerick, read a Continuity IRA statement in front of 60 people at the grave of Seán South, one of two IRA men who blew themselves up in a bombing raid in Fermanagh in 1957, to the effect that they regarded any Irish person serving in the British armed forces as a legitimate target for their terrorism. The death threat was issued, it was claimed, on behalf of Continuity IRA prisoners in Portlaoise prison.

It may be necessary to pinch yourself to remind yourself that this happened on Jan 6, 2013, not Jan 6, 1913, or even Jan 6, 1813.

It might also be necessary to take a deep, steadying breath and hope that the rest of the world, especially our neighbours in the North and across the Irish Sea, recognise this tragic minority for the deeply unrepresentative group it is.

The intervention, if it may be described as that, comes at a moment when tensions in the North are growing around the flying of the Union flag in Belfast. The leading and questionable role played by the UVF in those protests challenges those in the North who believe in the political process, just as the issuing of a blanket death threat in Limerick challenges those of similar views in the Republic. The success achieved by those constitutional politicians outweighs anything achieved through violence and must be safeguarded.

Sinn Féin’s suggestion that it may be time to hold a referendum on Irish unity does little to calm a fraught situation either.

A protest on the Belfast flags issue is planned for Dublin at the weekend and this has the capacity, if it is not allowed to proceed peacefully, to accelerate the backward slide to the horrors of the recent past.

Almost 15 years after the Good Friday Agreement was signed and endorsed by the majority of people living on this island, this heady mix of tribalism and delusion cannot be ignored. The consequences of it getting out of hand are far, far too grim to contemplate.

For more than half a century, Irish governments have been very reluctant to impose a security solution on these matters, recognising the role of the martyred extremist in our bloody past, but that does not mean that the office of the attorney general should not explore every option to contain these deluded and dangerous people, especially those purportedly issuing death threats from inside one of our prisons.