Kenny: SF still has questions to answer over kangaroo court

Taoiseach Enda Kenny says Sinn Féin still has questions to answer on the allegations of IRA sex abuse made by Maíria Cahill and Paudie McGahon and the kangaroo court investigations into them.

Mr Kenny was responding to comments by Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams over the weekend in which he said that the Taoiseach's critical remarks on his handling of the allegations were "demeaning".

“I’ve made my point about Deputy Adams, both as the president and leader of the party. I believe Maíria Cahill. I believe Mr McGahon. I believe there are questions to be answered and Sinn Féin are in a position to answer those and Gerry Adams in particular is,” he said.

“He knows. It is his duty to go to gardaí and tell them all about these matters.”

Asked about the decision of Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, not to travel to Washington on the annual St Patrick's Day trip, Mr Kenny said that Sinn Féin and the DUP needed to return to the Stormont House Agreement to deal with any outstanding issues on welfare reforms.

"I wouldn't expect the White House or the American administration would want to do anything that might upset that so I think it's a case of the politicians going back to the agreement that they both signed off on," he said.

Scurrilous

Meanwhile, Martin McGuinness has dismissed as “scurrilous allegations” a Sunday newspaper report that four senior Sinn Féin figures held an inquiry in 2006 which dealt with a litany of cases involving sexual and physical abuse by IRA men. It was “totally fallacious” and “simply not true,” he said.

The Sunday Independent report also said that an IRA man accused of sexually abusing Mr McGahon allegedly abused a 12-year-old boy in the Republic having been forced from Northern Ireland by an IRA "kangaroo court".

The newspaper said it had seen a document which suggests there were up to 100 IRA abusers.

On RTÉ’s This Week programme, Mr McGuinness said Sinn Féin was seeking legal advice on the reports.

Assault

He also said he had no knowledge of an allegation in the newspaper that the IRA man alleged to have abused Mr McGahon also abused two teenagers in Derry after that assault.

He accepted the IRA “should not have been involved” in what he described as “a clearly inadequate process”.

Fianna Fáil justice spokesman Niall Collins said that he was dumbfounded by Sinn Féin's threat to take legal action over the allegation that it had conducted an internal investigation.

Sinn Féin has said that the name of the alleged perpetrator was included on the list of nine named alleged sexual abusers handed to Mr Adams anonymously last November, but he realised it was the same person involved in Mr McGahon's case only when BBC staff researching the Spotlight programme wrote to the party with questions.