The future of policing: Reform plans must deliver real change

Though it’s almost a quarter of a century since the then Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams offered his chilling and revealing reassurance to his constituency — “they haven’t gone away, you know” — that reality endures, even if those who would undermine this democracy have moved on from the old Sinn Féin/IRA axis and style themselves differently.

The leopard may have changed its overcoat but its objectives and methodology remain the same — as some of the undercurrents shaping last week’s events in Roscommon suggest.