THE NORTHERN Assembly last night adopted a motion calling on Taoiseach Enda Kenny to issue an apology for the part a previous Fianna Fáil government allegedly played in the creation of the Provisional IRA.
If the past is to be truly and properly addressed then the Government must acknowledge that a previous Fianna Fáil administration was a “midwife at the birth of the Provo monster” at the end of the 1960s, DUP Assembly member Gregory Campbell asserted during a debate.
Mr Campbell told the Assembly that the current Coalition should apologise for the part the Fianna Fáil administration led by the then taoiseach Jack Lynch allegedly played in creating the Provisional IRA, “which brought murder and mayhem on to the streets of the United Kingdom for over 30 years”.
Mr Campbell was speaking to a DUP motion that welcomed improved North-South relations.
However he added “that relations would improve further” if the Government admitted a previous government played a part in the “emergence of the Provisional IRA”.
The motion called on the “prime minister of the Republic of Ireland to issue an apology”.
It follows on a meeting last week in Dublin between relatives of 10 Protestants murdered by the IRA at Kingsmill in south Armagh in 1976 and Mr Kenny.
Those relatives also called for such an apology.
At the weekend First Minister Peter Robinson said the Government should issue such an apology because there was “a clear connection between what the IRA did in its infancy and the Government of the Irish Republic”.
Mr Campbell in Stormont yesterday evening said that when a “state helps establish a terrorist organisation then it is up to the government to apologise for their actions”.
“No one is suggesting that the Irish Government should apologise for the actions of the IRA, but for their own actions in assisting the birth of the monster which took over 30 years to defeat and disarm,” said Mr Campbell.
