IRA urged to pay compensation to victims

John Kenny, who will contest the South Inner City constituency in June’s local elections, insisted the IRA must commit themselves fully to peace as he proposed the motion.

“It is now time for the IRA to pay the state back what they owe,” he told the conference in Killarney.

“Gerry Adams needs to decide if he wants to follow in the footsteps of Eamon de Valera or in the footsteps of Tony Soprano.

“The 2002 report by the House of Commons Committee on Northern Ireland, ’The Financing of Terrorism’, estimated that the IRA had an annual income of €12m, where is it?

“It’s surely not being spent on holiday homes for the VIPs of Sinn Féin in Donegal?

“It is time for the IRA to announce peace, it is time for them to pay the peace dividend and this money should be used to compensate the families of victims of their reign of terror.”

Justice Minister Michael McDowell, the party’s president, also launched a scathing attack on the IRA and Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, who has denied being a member of the organisation.

“I stand here in front of the national flag of our state,” he told delegates to rapturous applause.

“And I want to say this, true republicans don’t speak in mumbled voices through balaclavas.

“True republicans don’t break drug addicts’ legs with baseball bats.

“True republicans don’t finance their political campaigns by organising major crime.

“True republicans don’t shoot car thieves in their ankles and knees, true republicans couldn’t plant bombs to kill civilians at Enniskillen, at Omagh, at the Le Mon Hotel, at Manchester, Birmingham or Canary Wharf.

“No true republican could have looked through binoculars at children playing on a boat in Mullaghmore Bay before deliberately blowing them to pieces.

“And no true republican could lie and lie again about his involvement with a movement which brought all those things about.”