The Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, has defended his position on the intervention of Mr Gerry Adams in the presidential election. "I do not regard Sinn Fein as an ordinary political party," he said. Mr Bruton writes in today's Irish News, in response to a critical editorial: "Gerry Adams unilaterally endorsed Fianna Fail in the recent general election here, but I did not comment on that. When he intervened in a partisan way between the parties here for a second time, I felt I had every right to respond.
"Even though Sinn Fein has a genuine electoral mandate, I do not regard Sinn Fein as an ordinary political party. They are still associated with a military organisation. Most other parties are not.
"The acceptance of an endorsement from such a party is not like the acceptance of an endorsement from most other parties, or from some individual outside politics. Furthermore, Sinn Fein have not accepted the principle of consent that has been accepted by all other parties. This makes them different.
"I believe Mr Adams's unnecessary intervention was deliberately designed to be divisive. Sinn Fein wants to gradually convert Southern opinion to its point of view, and I believe its interventions to support Fianna Fail are calculatedly designed to achieve that. As I believe Sinn Fein's point of view to be wrong, and bad for nationalists North and South, I have every right to comment on these interventions, without drawing on my head the sort of unfair criticism contained in your editorial."
In a further editorial today, the Irish News writes that Mr Bruton's comments displayed an "attitude of mind which was the root cause of the collapse of the last IRA ceasefire".
"We now know that it was not only the mindset of the British government and the unionist parties, it was the attitude of the then Taoiseach," the newspaper writes.
Meanwhile, the Sinn Fein president was asked in Belfast whether he regretted saying he would vote for Prof Mary McAleese, in view of the subsequent controversy. Mr Adams said: "Sinn Fein hasn't endorsed any candidate.
"What I did was answer in a reasonable way a reasonable question. I have no regrets about it. That was seized upon by Mr Bruton. I obviously regret that; he should have had more sense. A man who is a former Taoiseach should have some wider view of the Ireland of today, of the peace process. I regret that involvement with the peace process has been used against a candidate. People will see through that."
Commenting on the negative reaction from unionists to Prof McAleese's speech on building bridges in Northern Ireland, Mr Adams said: "Name any Irish President who was embraced by unionists. In all of this, the low standard of the debate and the attempt at vilification is entirely the responsibility of those neo-unionist elements in Fine Gael and in the establishment in Dublin. The unionist response is entirely predictable.
"Mary Robinson, who actually resigned from the Irish Labour Party in protest because of her sensitivity to the needs of unionism, wasn't embraced by them."
Mr Adams called for further discussion: "I hope that we're going to have a real debate on these issues which goes beyond polling day. "Because we have had a national debate, it has galvanised political and public opinion over the last week or so and it's about our vision of ourselves," he said.
"Are we going to be a divided, factionalised, dysfunctional community that has never come to terms with its own history, North or South, or are we going to have a 32-county view of ourselves as an island people who can build a society which reflects diversity?
"We have to ask all the questions: What is nationalism? What is unionism? What is republicanism? What is Irishness? What is our relationship with Britain and what should it be?
"I would like to see all of those issues addressed in a more positive and progressive way because they are the questions underpinning the type of minor convulsion and hysteria we saw over the last number of weeks."
Mr Adams was speaking to reporters after he had opened a new training and recreation facility for young offenders in the Twinbrook area of west Belfast, set up with financial assistance from the EU, Making Belfast Work and the Probation Board.