Mr Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein claimed yesterday that the men convicted of the McCabe manslaughter qualify for early release under the Belfast Agreement.
He was speaking on RTE Radio yesterday morning. He said: "I believe that they will qualify. I know there's a difficulty at the moment because there's a wide-ranging debate in the South about the events of this week.
"I think we should all reserve judgment on all of that. We should approach this in a very cool, calm and collected fashion. We are playing for very big stakes here in the North. The process is going through a difficult period and it's time for everybody to keep their nerve."
Mr McGuinness was asked if they were eligible when the men were not convicted at the time, given that the word "convicted" was used in the agreement.
"Well, I mean, since the Good Friday agreement other prisoners have appeared before the courts in many parts of the country, and specifically here in the North, and those people qualify under the terms of the Good Friday agreement and there's no dispute about that," he replied.
Mr McGuinness was then asked about allegations of witness intimidation. He replied: "I think Sinn Fein have been involved for the greater part of this decade in trying to build a peace process, a conflict-resolution situation, and to bring about a normalisation of all aspects of life in this island so that we can end for ever all the difficulties that have existed."
Pressed on the subject of witness intimidation, he said: "Well, I'm dealing with the situation which I read about in the papers and hear about on RTE and I've listened very carefully in the course of this week. I think there's an element of sub judice about this particular case. There is a wide-ranging debate.
"I'm reluctant to become involved in it, to tell you the truth, because we have an awful lot of matters on our hands here in the North in order to look forward to February 15th, to get a determination on the departments in the North and a designation of those departments, to see the establishment of the shadow executive, the all-Ireland ministerial council and many other matters dealing with the peace process.
"Now what you're putting to me is one aspect of all of that, and I know that this obviously poses great difficulties for the families of guards who have been killed and I sympathise tremendously with them, and I also sympathise with many people in the South who are concerned about this particular trial at this time, but we have to be calm, we have to be cool, we have to be collected.
"We shouldn't be whipping people up into a frenzy about any particular aspect of this particular trial."