Stop pandering to bigots and criminals

HOW nauseating to see Taoiseach Bertie Ahern apologise to the DUP leader Ian Paisley for his gaffe about Sinn Féin and the decommissioning photographs.

As we were later reminded by a gloating Mr Paisley, the Taoiseach grovelled for a full nine minutes to that unreconstructed sectarian bigot.

This was a complete humiliation in itself, but now it is compounded by the revelation that SF-IRA were responsible for the Northern Bank robbery, thus exposing Mr Ahern’s naivety in granting virtually all SF-IRA demands, such as the early release of the Det Gda Jerry McCabe’s killers despite repeated solemn commitments never to do so.