SINN FÉIN:SINN FÉIN's presidential candidate Martin McGuinness said last night that criticisms of him from Fine Gael politicians demonstrated that they were suffering from "paranoia".
“Fine Gael have launched even more ridiculous and bizarre allegations against me even today about the Northern Bank. Of course these are all rubbish,” he said, prior to addressing supporters at a rally in Monaghan.
Mr McGuinness was referring to Government Chief Whip Paul Kehoe’s tweet about the £26.5 million (€31.35 million) IRA robbery of the Northern Bank in 2004.
“Why would you need your salary when you have the proceeds of the northern bank at your disposal?” Mr Kehoe tweeted.
Mr McGuinness said his reaction was to “laugh even harder” when he heard the claim from Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan that foreign corporate investment would dry up if the Sinn Féin candidate was elected president. Mr Hogan also described Mr McGuinness as a “terrorist”.
Mr McGuinness said the day he was nominated by Sinn Féin to run for the presidency, he was with the North’s First Minister Peter Robinson in the United States.
“[We were] in New York, in Wall Street talking to senior officials of the New York Stock Exchange, including Duncan Niederauer, and the reaction was that they and us will continue to create jobs and investment.”
Mr McGuinness said since he had become deputy first minister he had, together with Mr Robinson, helped to create over 1,200 jobs. “And there is more to come following that latest trip,” he said.
“The truth is, I can walk into any boardroom in the United States, and what we have already achieved in the North of Ireland makes it very easy to convince investors of the importance, and value, of investment here,” he said. It was noticeable, he added, that of the other six candidates, only Fine Gael were “into this form of allegations and, I believe, paranoia.”
In Dublin earlier Mr McGuinness described a series of interventions by senior Fine Gael figures about him as “absolutely bizarre” .
Fine Gael candidate Gay Mitchell said the people could not put somebody into the Áras when they did not know who he was. Mr Mitchell claimed Mr McGuinness did not leave the IRA in 1974 and said he did not live on the average industrial wage, as he had claimed.