Widow will not change position on release

McCabe case: The widow of Det Garda Jerry McCabe said last night that no political developments would change her opposition to the release of his killers.

Mrs Ann McCabe had watched television coverage yesterday of the Taoiseach and British Prime Minister's press conference in Belfast and had heard reference a number of times to "items" that had arisen during the latest talks.

She believed her husband was being referred to as an "item" and this was upsetting.

"My husband wasn't an item, he was a human being," she said.

She added that her opposition to the release of her husband's killers was clear from the outset of the latest negotiations on the North. Nothing that had happened in the political arena or nothing that would happen in the future would change that.

Det Garda McCabe was shot by a group of IRA men at Adare in 1996, during a botched robbery. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said last week that their release would have to be dealt with as part of any political deal in Northern Ireland.

"If I want to get a comprehensive deal, I do not have an alternative," he told the Dáil.

Yesterday the Minister for Defence, Mr O'Dea, accused the Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, of seeking to make political gain from the possible release of the killers of Det Garda McCabe and in doing so had engaged in "despicable" and "horrible politics".

Mr O'Dea said Mr Kenny should have contacted Mrs McCabe last week to warn her that he planned to ask the Taoiseach in the Dáil if an early release for the killers formed part of a peace deal being brokered in the North.

"Enda Kenny is going round the country posing as the champion of the McCabe family but he has never spoken to the McCabe family, he has never even picked up the phone once and rang Ann McCabe or her family," Mr O'Dea said.

When asked on RTÉ Radio 1 if he would resign if the killers were freed, as his party and Limerick East constituency colleague Mr Peter Power TD had threatened to do, Mr O'Dea said it would serve no purpose.

"Would it achieve anything, would it put those people back in prison? The people who support me in Limerick have waited 20 years for Fianna Fáil to appoint a cabinet minister from East Limerick. Am I to walk away after six or seven weeks and possibly be waiting for another 20 years?"

He had spoken to Mrs McCabe on the issue and she and her family had made it clear to him they did not want him to resign.

Mr O'Dea said he did not discuss the possible release of the McCabe killers with the Taoiseach when he was appointed to the Cabinet.

He said when Sinn Féin made the release of the men a precondition to any deal being struck, it had put the Government in a difficult position.

If the Government had refused to manoeuvre, "the thing would never have gotten off the ground".