Mr. Bertie Ahern:

In fairness, no party or no individual from any party ever tried to get that kind of concession. It was never sought or given. Criminality is criminality regardless of who is associated with it or behind it. We all agree it has to be stamped out with no protection offered. It is always difficult if there are two jurisdictions and two different sets of police. One of the arguments people will make is that if we had one jurisdiction, border criminality would be easier to eradicate.

Criminality is not confined to the Border. As a constituency, criminals are good at some of that to this day at the port and other areas. There can be no protections for that. Practices have grown up over the Troubles for obvious reasons, because of the level of security that was on the Border and how policing was maybe not able to operate as freely, but I would like to think that, 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement, police on both sides of the Border can go anywhere and deal with criminality. That has to be the case. Nobody wants to condone criminality or threats.

There is a bigger issue in modern society that has nothing to with the North or the Troubles. It involves witnesses who were engaged in crime. It is not only an Irish thing. I hope people who were engaged in crime get away from it because witnesses are intimidated and threatened. That is not an issue to do with Northern Ireland but an issue to do with crime generally.