Sir - The outcome of the Garda Jerry McCabe murder trial, together with several other recent events, must be causing many people to re-evaluate their support for the Good Friday Agreement. The realisation may be dawning that what people voted for last May was not one, but two, agreements. The first had to do with imaginative proposals for the better governance of Northern Ireland and the better ordering of relations between the two states on the island. Support for it was a matter of rational conviction.
The second, however, was based, not on reason, but on a set of optimistic assumptions about the intentions of people who had been acting out the fantasy of having a mandate to wage war on behalf of the Irish people. Support for including Sinn Fein in the agreement was canvassed on the basis that the membership of the IRA was war-weary, realised its campaign had not succeeded, and wished to be facilitated in its effort to abandon violence and embrace democracy. The public made its act of faith accordingly and swallowed such pills as the early release of convicted murderers, an official blind eye turned to mutilation attacks, and soft interviews on RTE with IRA spokesmen. It is probably fair to say that most people expected that, in return, some weapons or explosives would have been decommissioned by now, or an equivalent move made to build confidence in democratic intentions.
Events since last May now make this optimism look like wishful thinking, if not outright self-delusion. There have been the triumphal reception for the Balcombe Street gang at the Sinn Fein ardfheis, the nightly continuation of shootings and mutilations, three IRA statements categorically ruling out any question of decommissioning and a studied refusal even to state that the "war" is over. And all of this has been glossed in the unrepentant, imperious tones of people who obviously still believe they are the agenda-setters for the future of the island.
Now comes the collapse of the charges against the murderers of Garda Jerry McCabe, brought about by the sudden incapacity of prosecution witnesses to offer evidence. Has the penny dropped? Is a "peace" based on acceptance of Mafia rule a peace worth having? Facilitation is now seen to equal appeasement. The only effect on unreconstructed terrorists is to feed their self-importance, as well as the contempt they show for the rest of us weak-kneed democrats.
Harrowing as it must be for Garda McCabe's family, the outcome of this aborted trial, in illuminating the "peace" process, may do some good if it brings about two changes. First, there must be an end to the fence-sitting of this State's politicians in the dispute over decommissioning. Much journalism on the issue, when not actually hostile to the Trimble position, places a moral equivalence between the latter and the IRA, as if it were a case of two sets of intransigents needing their heads banged together. In contrast, your own Editorials - and the cartoons of Martyn Turner - have got it exactly right, and politicians of all parties should follow their lead.
It is time for all parties to realise that decommissioning is not merely a unionist preoccupation, but represents a line-in-the-sand issue for all democrats. Nobody can have access to power and links to a private army at the same time. Every TD must judge whether s/he is willing to sit in a cross-Border body with people who have not dissociated themselves from the murderers of Garda McCabe. If not, they should align themselves with David Trimble on the decommissioning issue. If such solidarity is not to the SDLP's liking, it needs to be told that the interests of this State are greater than those of any single Northern party. The recent call from Ruairi Quinn on Mr Trimble to yield on this issue was a worrying move in the wrong direction.
Secondly, if the process must founder on the decommissioning issue, political leaders North and South must steel themselves to deal with any group which goes back to full-scale violence, using all measures up to and including selective internment on both sides of the Border. There must be no excusing of violence as the "inevitable response to a political vacuum", as if it were not the result of cold calculation. This is the only way in which the delusions of terrorists will be cut down to size, and they will be made to realise that there is a force stronger than themselves on this island - the force of democracy. - Yours, etc., Dermot Meleady,
Dublin 3.