There was "strong suspicion" in Northern Ireland that former Irish government ministers played a role in assisting the creation of the Provisional IRA in 1970, the Ulster Unionist MP, Mr Roy Beggs, said yesterday.
Raising his concerns during business questions in the House of Commons, Mr Beggs said that Foreign Office documents released under the 30-year rule at the Public Record Office in London last week contained key references to the 1970 Arms Trial.
He said the documents contained a letter written by the former British ambassador to Ireland, Sir John Peck, to the then Foreign Secretary, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, in which he commented on the role of the former Taoiseach, Mr Charles Haughey, in the Arms Crisis. The UUP MP said that the letter from Sir John said: "Whatever the verdict, if Mr Haughey was not part of the conspiracy he was at any rate up to the neck in a scheme to import arms illegally."
Calling on the Leader of the House of Commons, Mrs Margaret Beckett, to provide parliamentary time to debate the documents and any additional information available in Ireland, Mr Beggs said: "There is very strong suspicion in Northern Ireland that some of the ministers in the Irish government at that time played a very big part in assisting the creation of the Provisional IRA which then gave us 30 years of murder and terror in Northern Ireland."
Current media reports on documents held in the Dail, Mr Beggs went on, suggested that Garda officers reported on a meeting between Mr Haughey and a senior member of the IRA "before the Arms Crisis rocked the government". Mrs Beckett said that while Mr Beggs raised "issues of substance and weight", she was not aware of the subject in question and could not find time for a debate in the near future. She suggested Mr Beggs could raise the issue with the Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr John Reid, during Northern Ireland Questions.
Last week's release of Sir John's diplomatic correspondence after the Arms Trial found him commenting on its impact on Irish politics.
"The judicial process is ended and the affair passes back into the arena of politics, impure and unsimple," he said in a letter to the Foreign Secretary.