IRA ALLEGATION:QUESTIONS ABOUT whether Gerry Adams had been an IRA member were dismissed as irrelevant to the election by Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness yesterday.
“I think the vast majority of people in Ireland are not fixated about the past,” he said. “They are interested in what is happening about the grave economic circumstances they face.”
Asked if he believed Mr Adams’s denial of involvement in the IRA, he said: “Gerry Adams has given his answer and that is the end of it as far as I am concerned.” Mr McGuinness said he did not talk about who was, or was not, in the IRA.
He accused Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin of playing politics in his attacks on Mr Adams adding that Mr Martin was attempting “to try and win back the ground the party has lost to Sinn Féin”.
In an RTÉ radio debate yesterday, Mr Adams said he had “already apologised” but “will do so again” for actions by republicans in the past.
In the Today with Pat Kenny debate, which was held in Dundalk, he denied ever having been a member of the IRA, but said: “I have never distanced myself from the IRA and I never will.”