Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I said earlier that I have never distanced myself from the men and women volunteers of the IRA and I never will. Until the day I die, I never will. That is not to say that I am not critical or, as I have said, that they were not guilty of actions that I regret very much. Mine is a genuine sorrow for these incidents in which people were injured or lost their lives.

I would, however, make the following point to the Taoiseach in a positive way in terms of how we can deal with this issue, and it is a point I have made quite a few times. I have also said that I will co-operate and will do my best to influence other republicans to co-operate with a genuine independent process of truth recovery. The Taoiseach spoke about the 1960s. I was a child at that time and Sinn Féin was banned in the North in the 1960s. The special powers Act was what was used to run the place. I come from a poor working class community which was denied any rights whatsoever, and let there be no equivocation about that. That is not said in justification for what happened since, because those responsible must take responsibility for their actions. The point is, where were successive Irish Governments on all of these issues? I have tried to be benign about this because the Irish Government obviously was dealing with partition in the same way. An Orange Tory conservative state was established in the North and a Green conservative State was established in the South. The elites who used to run the place were replaced by a native elite and the great heroes of 1916 and their Proclamation came to nothing. It is not visible anywhere on this island except in the hearts, genius, intellects and will of our people.

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