VB: When you launched Democratic Left, or rather New Agenda as you first called yourselves when you broke from the Workers' Party in May 1992, you said that year there was no future in another parliamentary Labour party. You said what was needed was a democratic socialist party with a strong presence in parliament which would seek to provide a radical alternative that would transform the structures of society. Now you've joined another parliamentary Labour Party, and by no stretch of the imagination could you call the present Labour Party an active democratic socialist party which seeks to transform society?
PDR: I still believe what I said; there is a need for an active democratic socialist party which would reform Irish society. We tried through Democratic Left to create that kind of party as a new political party. We failed to do that. We felt as a body that the best thing at that point was to join with the Labour Party and see if we could do it in that way. We're still trying to do that.
VB: Is that other party any iota different to what it was prior to you joining it?
PDR: I think it is. It has, for instance, a lot of Democratic Left members in it who are very active.
VB: But in terms of policies is it any different? PDR: In many respects the cutting edge of the current Labour Party is former Democratic Left people. And in terms of policy, yes, I think it is different to what it would have been. The recently published economic policy, for instance, I think is different. We are arguing that the levels of taxation should not be reduced below a certain minimum to ensure that public services can be adequately funded.
VB: You call this active democratic socialism?
PDR: I call it active; being active within a political party seeking to ensure that there are ideals put forward which are different from other parties, such as the PDs who want to simply reduce the public service to nil, who want to cut taxes to a point where they are not capable of supporting public services.
VB: In May of 1992 you said "social democracy in most cases has degenerated into mere electoralism, has lost any resolve to be part of a wider strategy for the transformation of society and has settled for marginalism". Would you think that's a pretty good characterisation of the Labour Party nowadays?
PDR: No, I don't think so. I think what you have to bear in mind is that since then [1992] the Labour Party and ourselves have worked very closely in government. The Labour Party managed shortly after I made that speech to achieve something like 32 seats in the Dβil and introduced a huge raft of reforming legislation when in government, first with Fianna Fβil and then in the Rainbow Coalition.
In 1999, we had a choice: do we let the party [Democratic Left] simply sink into oblivion and go off and pack our bags and return to private life or do we find a way of trying to engage in politics in the most effective way we can. That's what we did and that's why we joined the Labour Party.
VB: Why should anybody vote Labour in the next election rather than Fine Gael?
PDR: Because, in my view, there is a body of opinion expressed by the Labour Party which is in favour of those who are disadvantaged in Irish society. There's a view in the Labour Party that Irish society should be built around solidarity of supporting one another, of using our taxes to do that. Of obliging business to pay its share in terms of making a contribution to that. Not only that, of ensuring that business also has proper working conditions for people to work. Not only maintaining them but ensuring that the places where people work are safe.
There's a range of things there that seems to me that are not the values necessarily of Fine Gael as a party. I'm not suggesting that there are people in Fine Gael who don't necessarily have their own views but as a party it's not the Fine Gael view.
VB: You yourself are pretty rich now.
PDR: No. I'm not.
VB: You got a fortune from Independent Newspapers from a libel case [arising from an article written by journalist Eamon Dunphy prior to the 1992 general election].
PDR: It depends on how you measure a fortune.
VB: £350,000 is a fortune to most people. Nobody has won that amount of money on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
PDR: I'm not disputing with you, it's a good lump sum of money but it's not a fortune.
VB: What did you do with it?
PDR: I shared the money out among my family and of, course, I used some of it - about £70,000 - to fund the European election campaign.
VB: So Independent Newspapers elected you to Europe?
PDR: Indirectly.
VB: You took quite a gamble pursing that libel case after the jury had been discharged in the first trial [this followed an alleged contempt on the part of Independent Newspapers] and after the jury had disagreed in the second trial.
PDR: I felt I had to do it.
VB: Why? Nobody believed the article. Nobody believed that you were involved in prostitution or racketeering.
PDR: I felt that it was sufficiently nasty for me to challenge it. I happen to believe that important as the media are they also have a responsibility not to detract the good name of any person on the basis of rumours and suspicion and on the basis of completely cavalier statements about people, accusing them of the most horrendous crimes. They just don't have that right. I was determined that if they did it to me they would not get away with it and I didn't let them get away with it.
VB: Was it an unhappy period for you?
PDR: A very difficult period for me, yes.
VB: Did it cost you sleep?
PDR: It cost me a lot. It cost me a huge amount on a personal level.
VB: What?
PDR: Everything. It cost me a huge amount. I'm not going into it, I don't want to rehearse it, I don't want to relive it, I don't want to go over it again. It was an enormous trauma for me to go through that and I'm not going to go over it again.
VB: Did your colleagues try to dissuade you from going ahead with the case?
PDR: Some of them did, yes. Some of them didn't and thennsupported me.
VB: I don't want to rehearse the issues involved in that case but I just want to make one point. Anybody who did know about the issues involved, while they accepted that you had never been involved in prostitution or racketeering or other criminality, were perplexed about one issue. That was how could you not have known that an organisation, the Official IRA, associated with the Workers' Party, of which you were a and violence, including murder, robbery, racketeering, beatings, intimidation and counterfeiting. How could you not have known that they were up to these things?
PDR: Well, look Vincent, the court cases ran over - three court cases - I don't know at this stage, I've lost track of how many days I spent in the witness-box. I was cross-examined by some of the best lawyers in the country, who put all of those questions to me and a jury finally decided unanimously that what I told the court was true. I intend to leave it at that. I have no wish to rehearse it, I am not going to rehearse it. No matter how much you persuade me, Vincent, I am not going to rehearse it.
VB: All right, let's forget about the court case. Can I just ask you: were you aware that all these activities were going on when you were a member of Sinn FΘin the Workers' Party?
PDR: I'm simply not going to get into that area. I've already given my answers honestly, straightforwardly, under oath.
VB: I have two articles here giving very specific details of murders which the Official IRA had been involved in over the years, including the murder of Seamus Costello; of terrible beatings they engaged in Belfast; and specific robberies which members of the Workers' Party and Sinn FΘin the Workers' Party had been involved in. These were published over many years with all the details given. How could somebody like you have remained within a party that was associated with all these activities for that length of time?
PDR: I'm sorry for repeating myself, Vincent. Look, every single one of the things you're talking about was raised in the court cases you've referred to. They were gone through, as I say, by the best lawyers in the land. The Independent made these kind of allegations; I've answered them in court. The jury decided that I had no act or part in any of these things and so on and so forth and I don't intend to go any further into the matter. What I've said is on the record and I have no intention of revisiting, full stop.
VB: Let's move on to another issue and that is the question of decommissioning. You have been critical of the Provisional IRA for stalling on decommissioning. Yet, in an interview with The Irish Times in 1992, you said, "I have never read of any revolutionary or armed conspiracy or armed organisation ever handing up its weapons when it went into decline." This was an answer to the Official IRA statement on decommissioning.
PDR: It hasn't. Up to then there hadn't been.
VB: Why were you happy to go along with there being no decommissioning on the part of the Official IRA but are now joining the calls for Provisional IRA decommissioning?
PDR: First of all, the Official IRA wasn't seeking to negotiate itself as part of the government of Northern Ireland.
VB: Nor was, or is, the Provisional IRA.
PDR: The point is that we have had a situation where the IRA and Sinn FΘin, the Irish Government and the British government, the loyalist paramilitaries and the Ulster Unionist Party have sat down and they have negotiated an agreement which included the decommissioning of weapons. So if I'm critical of the IRA in not moving fast enough in that regard it is because I feel that that tardiness will put at risk the compromises which we're negotiating in that agreement.
VB: Do you trust Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness? Do you think they will make the transition which former colleagues of yours in the official republican movement had worked through previously?
PDR: I think they personally have. The manner in which they have, over a long number of years, pushed in that direction seems to me to prove that they have made that transition. I have to say to you that when it was suggested to me in the first instance that this would happen I was disbelieving but I have been convinced otherwise.
VB: Are you happy to leave the Dβil?
PDR: Yes. Obviously there are pangs of regret and so on and everything. I've been in the Dβil for what, 19 years now; next month will be 19 years. It's been a long service. I enjoyed my time largely, not all the time, but largely. I've enjoyed my time. I feel I've made a contribution. I don't make any great bones about it but I've made a contribution. I try to be honest in terms of my views I expressed in the Dβil and outside the Dβil, I still do. I don't see me leaving the Dβil as the end of my political involvement. I intend to be as active as I can in the European Parliament, to bring as much of the politics there back to here and to have the issues that are being debated there debated equally here. It is important to connect what is going on in the European Parliament to what's going on here.
VB: Could you see yourself standing for the Dβil again? PDR: I don't think so. I could see myself running again for the European Parliament; I don't really see myself standing again for the Dβil.
VB: Are you happy in yourself now?
PDR: Yes