Alliance accuses Government of `cherry-picking' on early releases

The Alliance Party has accused the Government of "cherry-picking" the Belfast Agreement after the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, said the decision to exclude Det Garda Jerry McCabe's killers from the agreement's early release scheme was a "political judgment".

In a letter to the Alliance president, Dr Philip McGarry, Mr O'Donoghue said the Government's decision was taken to ensure public support in the South for the Belfast Agreement.

He said it was "a political judgment made against the background of the need to ensure public support for the terms of the agreement. It was not, in other words, a question of applying different standards in the case of persons convicted of the murder of gardai generally, but a question, rather, of avoiding a situation which (as subsequent events have shown) could have put the public acceptability of the agreement as a whole in jeopardy. "With regard to the non-inclusion of a specific provision in the agreement to exclude the Garda McCabe case, the position is that it was only possible to write into the agreement what all the parties negotiating the agreement agreed to," he added.

"Sinn Fein were not prepared to accept the position adopted by the Government in relation to the killers of Garda McCabe, and consequently no provision to that effect was included in the agreement. That does not, however, alter the fact that the Government made it crystal clear to Sinn Fein that the Garda McCabe case would not be within the terms of the agreement."

Mr O'Donoghue said the Government's "general position" on early release of prisoners convicted of murdering gardai was illustrated by the manner in which such offenders were granted full early release from prison, "despite the difficulties which this created for the families of the murdered gardai and the Government".

Dr McGarry said Mr O'Donoghue's response was "totally unacceptable". "It is clear that the Taoiseach signed the document on Good Friday with no intention of implementing it with regard to the McCabe case. This can only be described as cherrypicking the agreement and as such is to be deplored," he added.