Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

How genuine are this Government and the British Government in outing criminal intimidation when they tolerated it for so long? Years ago, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform spoke about things he knew happened but we have seen action only recently. The Taoiseach blew the issue out of the water in recent weeks because the political landscape changed.

Calling the murderers of Robert McCartney to account is a matter of justice for him and his family. More than this, it is a test in present circumstances of whether a working class community is allowed to live in an atmosphere where democratic, human and political rights are respected and guaranteed. Bringing these murderers to account also challenges in a very real way the political control of Catholic working class communities by republican paramilitaries. Loyalist paramilitaries visit the same intimidation on Protestant working class communities. The reluctance to dissolve the IRA is not because a resumption of the paramilitary campaign against the British State is contemplated — that disaster ran into the sand long ago. It is retained as an enforcer for the political domination of the republican movement in the Catholic working class communities. It plays the same role as the loyalist paramilitary organisations.

I call on the real power in Northern Ireland, the salt of the earth, working class people to mobilise independently, throw the sectarians aside and in this way deliver justice for Robert McCartney and his family. This will also lay the basis for an alternative society where their real needs are met rather than being subjected to sectarian monsters.

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