Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has accused the Irish government of cosying up to British intelligence agency MI5 and the British government in a bid to halt the growth of Sinn Fein in Ireland's south.
A recent British report claimed the Irish Republican Army Council still exists — something flatly rejected by Sinn Fein. The IRA decommissioned its weapons in an internationally validated process in 2005 as part of the peace process in the six counties of Ireland's north still claimed by Britain that began with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.
Adams said: “The very people … who produced the recent report, have also brought in a veto to stop the families of victims of British terrorism from getting the truth about what happened to their loved ones.”
Adams also noted the involvement of MI5 in some of the most notorious incidents of the conflict, including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974 that killed 34 people and the 1989 murder of human rights lawyer Pat Finucane in Belfast.
“They are prepared to put the peace and political processes at risk in an effort to stop the growth of Sinn Fein north and south,” he said. “These are the people some in this Dail choose to believe; probably for the same reason.”
Adams said: “The responsibility of the Irish government and of the parties in this Dail should be to support the efforts to make progress — not to place narrow self-serving party political objectives above the necessary process of change and progress.”
[Abridged from An Phoblacht.]
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