Republicans must halt criminality

INEVITABLY, the finger of suspicion for yesterday’s multi-million euro robbery points at the IRA but the possibility that other criminal gangs were behind the heist cannot be ruled out.

Inevitably, too, the republican movement can be expected to roll out its customary mantra of denial of any involvement in the multi-million euro heist.

Yet, last evening’s discovery of bomb-making equipment in several areas shows beyond doubt that dissidents such as the Real IRA pose a major threat to the security of the State.

Significantly, the question of Dublin criminals being involved has not been ruled out by the gardaí. Nor, however, can the IRA be discounted, despite the political damage that another haul in the wake of the €36 million Northern Bank robbery would inflict on the organisation.

In a copycat version of the Belfast haul, yesterday’s kidnappings and hold-up of a security van were executed with the military precision of hardened subversives.

As Taoiseach Bertie Ahern says, the operation bore all the hallmarks of the IRA.

If that proves right, pressure will increase on Sinn Féin to sever its umbilical links with a private army that remains deeply immersed in criminal activities, from murder and intimidation to kneecapping and racketeering.

Republican denials of links with criminality can be taken with a large dose of scepticism from a movement that spews hypocrisy from both sides of its mouth.

Denials of involvement in the Belfast heist were shot to pieces by the recovery of sterling notes from republicans during money laundering investigations by the Criminal Assets Bureau in the Republic.

Logistically, the IRA, either on its own or in tandem with other criminals, is highly capable of yesterday’s operation, which included kidnapping a family overnight and forcing their father to drive the security van. This has not been a victimless crime.

In a remarkable sense, however, the IRA’s blatant disregard for the lives and rights of other people could yet prove the rock they perish on.

As witnessed throughout the peace process, women have an ability to tough it out and down-face the republican bully boys.

They invariably focus on what really matters. Unlike politicians and governments, they are not prepared to play sordid mind-games with life and death issues.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the McCartney sisters to bring their brother’s murderers to account, the door of the White House will be closed in Gerry Adams’s face on St Patrick’s Day.

Significantly, the Sinn Féin president is also spurned by Senator Ted Kennedy, a staunch supporter of the Irish cause and someone who played a leading part in bringing republicans in from the cold.

In a further turn of the screw on Sinn Féin, the widow of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe yesterday dismissed the statement issued by the convicted killers of her husband as “irrelevant” and a “PR exercise for Sinn Féin/IRA” that came nine years too late.

Throwing down a gauntlet to Kerry TD Martin Ferris, she challenged him to condemn her husband’s killing and admit it was a crime.

Typifying the double standards of Sinn Féin, he refuses to use those words.

It is time Mr Ferris and his fellow travellers in Sinn Féin realised that they live in a democracy where killing another person is a heinous crime which cannot be justified by some twisted ideology.

Thanks to the unflinching courage of both the McCartney sisters and Ann McCabe, republicans are coming under relentless pressure to eschew criminality.

That means disbanding the IRA and taking the gun out of Irish politics for once and for all.