A Supreme Court decision on the killers of Det Garda Jerry McCabe had been the subject of "gross and deliberately dishonest misrepresentation by senior Sinn Féin figures in recent days", the Minister for Justice claimed in the Dáil last night.
Mr McDowell said the Government had consistently maintained that the prisoners did not qualify for release under the Belfast Agreement.
"The Government has contested the contrary view the whole way through the courts, to the Supreme Court, and won there. If they had so qualified, they would still not be in jail," he added.
Mr McDowell said the Government's requirements for acts of completion by the IRA were: independently verified decommissioning of all weapons, a complete and total end to paramilitarism and unambiguous ends to all forms of IRA criminality.
He said that total decommissioning would have to be verified by the independent commission and the ending of criminal activity would have to be verified by the independent monitoring commission.
"The Government formed a view that if, but only if, all these pieces fell into place, it would consider the release of these four men," said Mr McDowell.
"Their release would not be considered under the agreement but under the Offences Against the State Act, subject to conditions, and in the context only of a comprehensive and final settlement and bedding down of political stability in Northern Ireland." The Government, he said, would prefer to see those prisoners serve their full sentence and had not chosen to deal with the issues as a matter of choice in the current political talks. "It was an issue raised by Sinn Féin," he added.
Mr McDowell repeated that the Taoiseach and himself had stated that only in the context of acts of completion being achieved, leading to nothing less than the definitive end of the Northern question, could the question of the prisoners come into prospect.
The Minister was replying, on the adjournment, to the Fine Gael spokesman on justice, Mr Jim O'Keeffe, who said that the Minister should make it clear that the killers never came within the terms of the Belfast Agreement for early release.
"The position was also made absolutely clear by the High Court and the Supreme Court where it was stated that the Government's power to release is a 'quentessentially executive function', and that the decision 'that the applicants would not be entitled to consideration for release under the agreement was a policy choice which was entirely within the discretion of the executive to make'."
