Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I accept the Taoiseach's bona fides in endeavouring to deal with this issue. He is correct in saying that, in the Paudie McGahon case, we are talking about a safe house. I think Deputy Adams and those in Sinn Féin-IRA will have been very well aware of the circumstances of this for a long time, just as they were well aware of the Maíria Cahill case for a long time but chose to do nothing about it either, or about the entire system.

It is all very well for Deputy Adams to say, "We will be judged in terms of what we do now or into the future". I would like to think people would judge according to what people did when they first heard of these cases or what they did not do. We know from the public record of this House that Deputy Adams himself has admitted this and put it on the public record. He accused me of making some assertion about this earlier, and the Taoiseach too, but it was actually Deputy Adams on the public record in this House who said that the Provisional IRA took actions in regard to abusers which involved keeping the crimes away from the authorities, and that the IRA dealt with it itself internally. He then kind of said, "Well, that was unfortunate but they had no alternative". They put forward the untruth that it was because of the RUC and all this kind of stuff.

If we go through all of the sequences and the commentary that has been made, there is a complete thread of inconsistency between what is said one week compared with what is said the next week. That is why the bona fides of what Deputy Adams says have to be questioned. It is very difficult to take them on board given his track record in response to these issues on an ongoing basis.

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