THE DEPUTY leader of the Ulster Unionist Party has told Sinn Féin members republicans have “hard and painful questions” to answer over the past during his speech at a party conference.
John McCallister was addressing Sinn Féin’s Uniting Ireland event in Newry, Co Down, on Saturday.
He also conceded unionists also had questions to answer, saying that in the history of Northern Ireland, unionism “fell short”.
“This is a part of our heritage that we have to confront and recognise. It is not easy and it certainly isn’t without political risk, but to build reconciliation in Northern Ireland and throughout the island, it has to be done,” he said.
“If unionism failed to address Edward Carson’s warning that a Catholic minority should have nothing to fear from a Protestant majority in a new Northern Ireland, then republicans have also fallen short of the words from the 1916 declaration.
“Their actions between 1969 and 1998 told a brutally and bloodily different story. The Troubles were a tragic stain on the history of Northern Ireland.”
Mr McCallister added he believed the idea of a united Ireland was a “political fiction” if there was not a shared Northern Ireland where political parties confronted their “divisive past with a new honesty”.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said the UUP man had “reminded us [that] to plan for the future we have to deal with the past”.
“Sinn Féin has never shied away from this, whether on the issue of victims or on other matters. Dealing with the past is not easy and there is little agreement at a political level about how we do this, but that should not be an obstacle to the future.
“Republicans, including the IRA, have acknowledged the hurt they have inflicted, and Sinn Féin have put forward proposals to both governments, victims’ support groups and the other political parties for an independent, international process for dealing with all of the issues arising from the conflict and with deference to all the victims, including victims of the British state and unionist paramilitaries, as well as the IRA.”
The event was the fifth such conference Sinn Féin has held in recent months on the theme of A New Republic and the first to be held in the North.
Mr Adams said it was to “raise awareness of the mutual benefits” of Irish unity.