Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Deputy for her supportive remarks. I spoke to Margaret Ritchie last week. The Government, including the Minister for Foreign Affairs and me, has been supportive. While I did not issue a statement in the heat of the period, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, did so. He issued a very strong and forthright statement in support of her at a time when the issue was at its height a few months ago. Obviously, there is ongoing contact with officials, as we have a number of senior officials based in the North, and we have been supportive of her. I do not wish to get into what happened within the Executive. Obviously, some of her colleagues in the Executive took the issue to a vote. Peter Robinson said some very hard things to the effect that she was acting outside her remit, but I do not wish to interfere with that. The issue was dealt with.

Her stance was courageous and was in line with the stance taken for years by the Government in trying to reward those who are involved in trying to bring about peace while trying to be as firm as possible towards those who are not. Some individuals within the UDA and other loyalist groups have been trying very hard to co-operate, while others have not and have been associated with criminality. The Government has always taken the position to support those who have been trying to make progress and bring matters forward.

I have concerns in respect of the dissident groups. Colleagues and others will be aware that when I visited Derry two weeks ago, I made a statement to that effect. A variety of splinter groups are extant, none of which is up to any good and collectively they continue to cause a problem. The police officer who was shot on Thursday, thankfully, was lucky to survive an attack with a shotgun. An attack this week has left a police officer with serious injuries and I send our best wishes to him and his family. Two arrests have arisen from that case. There is dissident activity and while it may not be significant in numbers, enough Members will remember other times, North and South, that showed how small groups can make much trouble. While I do not wish to give respect to the organisation in question by recalling its name, Members will remember its activities here a long time ago. There is a hard core group that is out to create as much embarrassment, trouble, harassment and killing as possible, and the security forces must be extremely vigilant.

As for the murder of Paul Quinn, the intelligence in this regard is that it was not paramilitary but pertained to feuds about criminality that were taking place. However, it is important that the significant efforts that are being made, North and South, will result in arrests in this case. I spoke to the Garda Commissioner last night about this matter, as well as to Garda officers and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. A dedicated effort is being made to achieve arrests in this case. I am strongly behind such an effort because, for obvious reasons, it is of major importance to the Government in this case to try to find the perpetrators of what was a horrendous and vile act. I only needed to read half the report on the incident. While there are many things I do not understand, I find it hard to understand how anyone living on this island or this planet could do such things. For that reason and many others, I would like to see them serve their due sentence.

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