Mr Gerry Adams said yesterday that the Minister for Justice, Mr McDowell was "playing politics" with his recent allegations that Sinn Féin had "deep and ongoing links to criminality".
Speaking at the Press Club in Australia's capital Canberra, Mr Adams denied that Sinn Féin is being funded by criminality. He said that the Minister had produced no evidence on the issue and that "all this bumpf by Mr McDowell has come in an election year. He's playing politics with a very serious issue".
Speaking about the current impasse in Northern Ireland politics, Mr Adams, who is in Australia to promote his book Hope And History, said that republicans are not prepared to make any deal other than the Belfast Agreement.
"We won't accept less than we negotiated in the Good Friday agreement," he told an audience that included journalists, senior Australian Labour Party politicians, Irish-Australians and the First Secretary at the Irish Embassy in Canberra, Mr Ciarán Byrne.
Mr Adams also said that what he termed "British securocrats" never envisaged Sinn Féin holding the position of Deputy First Minister in Northern Ireland and that this was part of the reason for the delay in lifting the suspension of the institutions.
However, he did praise the British Prime Minister. "Tony Blair's heart in on the right line of the process," he said, adding that: "we wouldn't have got as far as we have without him".
Asked if the over 3,000 deaths in the Northern Irish Troubles had been justified, Mr Adams said "I can't talk to the dead."
He added: "What you can do is ensure no one else dies, that's a price worth paying."