Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore’s declaration that the Republic needs to acknowledge unionist charges that it did not do enough to combat the IRA has been sharply criticised by Sinn Féin.

Speaking in Glasgow last night, Sinn Féin Newry and Armagh MP Conor Murphy said a similar speech – made to the British-Irish Association in Cambridge 10 days ago – would never have “come out of” the Department of Foreign Affairs a decade ago.

Much of the speech “had been contentious”, he complained. “Perhaps there isn’t the same dialogue between the Department of Foreign Affairs and political parties that there was at the height of the negotiations [in the 1990s]. I doubt if a type of speech like that would have come out of the Department of Foreign Affairs 10 years ago, because I think it was quite clearly unhelpful in large parts.”

Both Mr Murphy and Northern Ireland Justice Minister David Ford agreed that the Irish and British governments should be involved in the talks now being led by ex-US diplomat Richard Haass.

“At some point, if we are looking at the past, we must have the involvement of the two governments,” said Mr Ford, since “they are guarantors of the past and were players”.

The contributions were made by the men at a Liberal Democrats’ conference fringe meeting hosted by peace and reconciliation group Champ.