Seanad Report: Dr Maurice Hayes (Ind) said it had always been his view that the killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe should have been covered by the Good Friday agreement.
Following strong condemnation by Opposition parties of what was termed a Government U-turn on early release for the four men, Dr Hayes began by saying that if he said something that appeared hurtful to people, he did not intend it in that way. He deplored the murder of Garda McCabe and he sympathised with his relatives. He equally deplored the murders of 306 RUC men. He lived near to the widows and children of some of them. These officers' next-of-kin had been asked to make an enormous sacrifice in the interests of the peace process, and most of them had done so.
They had said: "If that's the price, that's the price."
Dr Hayes said that he could have lived with a situation in which no one was released, and there was a strong case for saying that nobody should have been let out on either side until they had done their time. "But one knows the politics of the situation, the difficulties of negotiations. It appears to me to be invidious to make distinctions between those who murder gardaí and those who murder RUC men. It runs the risk of giving the impression to people in Northern Ireland that somehow it was all right to murder an RUC man, but in any case less culpable than murdering a garda. I think that is something we should think very clearly about and for a long time."
Dr Martin Mansergh (FF) said that when these men came to be released, at whatever stage, it would not be done under the Good Friday agreement. They had served almost eight years, so he did not think that early release would be the correct description.
Dr Mansergh said he had great respect for what Det Garda McCabe's colleague, Det Garda Ben O'Sullivan, said in a recent interview. It was necessary to remember that the peace process in the North had a moral purpose.
"But if all we want to do is to moralise, then we might as well not have started with the peace process in the first place."
Mr Brian Hayes, Fine Gael Seanad leader, said that when a person laid his life on the line for this country, they, as parliamentarians had an obligation to defend the memory of that person and to ensure that those responsible for criminal actions were adequately dealt with.