Minister reacts to latest attack on premises

Minister for Justice Michael McDowell says he will not be intimidated by individuals who have been carrying out attacks on his property.

The Minister's constituency office in Ranelagh, Dublin, was targeted in an attack last week - the second such attack on property owned by him in less than three weeks.

He was speaking at the opening of a refurbished Garda station in Ennistymon, Co Clare, yesterday.

Mr McDowell said: "I don't like it happening, but if anybody thinks they are going to intimidate me with that kind of activity, they are very, very wrong. I'm made of slightly sterner stuff than that."

He continued: "We have to get to a situation where politics in this country is conducted by the force of argument and people's votes are solicited at the ballot box by a process that is entirely fair.

"But if one group of people think that they can rob banks, extort money, use money from smuggling to support their presence in the political process, they are very much mistaken."

Asked if he believed there was any subversive involvement in the attack on his constituency office, Mr McDowell said: "I can't form a judgment on that."

In the attack, a weapon, possibly a hammer, was used to smash the reinforced glass of the front window of the office.

Last month, a shot was fired through the window of Mr McDowell's holiday home in Rooskey, Co Roscommon.

On the issue of Sinn Féin dealing with criminality, Mr McDowell said: "I am quite happy, as Downing Street is, to look for hopeful signs.

"What is needed now is an end to paramilitarism, an end to criminality, Sinn Féin agreeing that in future, it will engage on the same basis as every other democratically elected politician."

However, he said Gerry Adams's address to the Sinn Féin ardfheis "restated a proposition that is fundamentally unacceptable to most people in Ireland, that authorised activities of IRA members are not crimes, so if you consider the implications of that remark, the killing of Jerry McCabe for example, that puts things back into focus".

He added: "I welcome the courage of the McCartney sisters who have brought some reality to all of this, but there is an awful lot more to be done and it has to be done by the Provisional movement."