Patrick Magee, the man convicted of the 1984 Brighton bombing of the Conservative Party conference, in which five people died and many were injured, said yesterday that all deaths and injuries in the conflict were regrettable, but he "did not think there was another way of doing it or going about it".
Magee, who was released from prison under the Belfast Agreement, said he was not sorry that Mrs Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister, who had been in the Grand Hotel at the time, did not die.
However, in an interview yesterday on the RTE Marian Finucane radio programme, which brought protests from listeners, he refused to discuss any details of the bombing.
Ms Finucane said that when people heard of people like him getting out of prison they were absolutely horrified. How did he react to that?
Magee said he was accepted in his own community. "Obviously, I'm aware that it was a bitter pill for the British establishment to see me walk out of those gates, given the nature of the offences."
Ms Finucane said he had stayed at the Grand Hotel for three nights and had left a bomb there. What had gone through his mind when he did that?
"Marian, Brighton is still, I think, too close to the bone at this stage. We're in a conflict-resolution situation. We haven't really got peace yet. There's a lot of outstanding issues. And, until that day arrives, I think it's too soon to be talking about the operational side of the Brighton bombing or my part, or my alleged part, in it. I prefer not to deal with that."
Ms Finucane said that five people had died and that Mrs Norman Tebbit was still in a wheelchair. How did he feel then? "The victims of Brighton, I would put them with all the other victims of this conflict. I think all the deaths and all the injuries are regrettable. Of course they were, you know. When people are sentenced to a life in a wheelchair, how can you not but regret that."
He thought the question being asked was if there was no other way to win the nationalist community's freedom and democracy, and he honestly did not believe there was.
"Victims of what actions are attributed to me would find it probably uncomfortable to hear me saying that, but from the heart I regret, as I believe all republicans regret, the necessity to violence. I don't believe there was another course open to us."
Did he expect that Margaret Thatcher was going to die, Ms Finucane asked.
Again, he said he did not want to go into the operational side. "A lot of that side of it, there's a story to be told at a future date. All I can say about it is that I don't regret that she didn't die, the way the thing panned out. I said this in a Sunday Business Post interview a couple of weeks ago. The way it panned out, it was probably better that she didn't die. I'm thinking in terms of what would have been the likely reaction from the British and Irish governments and in places like America to have the British cabinet a casualty of an IRA operation."
Ms Finucane said a lot of callers to RTE had objected to what he had to say. One wanted to know how anything could be worth killing five people. Another had said she thought it was horrendous and distasteful that he should be interviewed.
Magee said that ultimately one had to do a sort of moral audit and ask could he justify not only his actions but actions taking place in the struggle he was involved in. "The bottom line is that, unpalatable as it might be to some of those people who have phoned in, I don't think there was another way of doing it or going about it."