Ahern says his view of Sinn Fein remains the same

The Taoiseach does not see any change in the Government's relationship with Sinn Fein following Mr Martin McGuinness's confirmation yesterday that he was second-in-command of the IRA in Derry on Bloody Sunday in 1972.

Mr Ahern said he had not changed his own view, first publicly expressed in 1995, that "Sinn Fein and the IRA are opposite sides of the one coin".

He was responding to Fine Gael Leader Mr Michael Noonan, who asked if future negotiations with Sinn Fein would now take place "without the fiction of referring the matters agreed to the army council".

He suggested that Mr McGuinness's statement to the Saville inquiry that he was second-in-command of the IRA in Derry on Bloody Sunday was "a departure from the practice adopted by the republican movement of insisting that Sinn Fein and the IRA were two separate entities".

Mr Noonan said the belief of successive Irish governments was that "while there was single membership of either organisation, dual membership was the norm rather than the exception, particularly at the highest level".

Mr Ahern said he had no "insight" other than press reports about Mr McGuinness's statement but he welcomed the move. The whole purpose of the inquiry into Bloody Sunday was to get to the truth.

He knew "it is important that Martin McGuinness makes a contribution. We have to wait to see what happens, but it is vital that those who have relevant information come forward so the truth can be established."

He said that while some people said "Sinn Fein/IRA" it had been the practice of the Irish Government to treat them as separate organisations.

He had said in one of his earliest statements about the North that the two organisations were opposite sides of the same coin. "I also held that view in dealing with them, although the reality is that when you deal with Sinn Fin as a political party, they will not ever communicate other than to say they will consult and use their best efforts and endeavours with the IRA."

He believed we would move to a situation over the next few years where the IRA "will cease to exist in the form with which they [Sinn Fein] have had a close association".

On a separate issue, Mr Austin Currie (FG, Dublin West) said comments by Mr Mitchel McLaughlin after the Northern Ireland census were dangerous and sectarian.

He said Mr McLaughlin had stated that the census would indicate a substantial increase in the number of Catholics in the North, and one of his colleagues said it would mean a united Ireland in 15 years.

"Would the Taoiseach agree that this sectarian rhetoric is extremely dangerous and that what we ought to be concentrating on in Northern Ireland is not some `rabbit theory' of outbreeding the other side, but rather the solid work of being involved together in governing Northern Ireland in bringing about reconciliation?", he asked.

Mr Ahern replied that it was not helpful to "try to predict what might happen in the longer term".