Maurice Hayes (Independent)

I do not intend what I am about to say be hurtful to anyone. I deplore the murder of Detective Garda McCabe and I sympathise with his relatives. I equally deplore the murders of 306 RUC officers. I live near the widows and children of some of those RUC officers who were asked to make an enormous sacrifice in the interests of the peace process. By and large most of them did so on the basis that it is the price to be paid. These people should have been covered by the Agreement all along. I could have lived with a situation in which nobody was released. There was a strong argument for not releasing anybody on either side until they had done their time. However, one knows the politics of the situation and the difficulties of negotiations.

It seems invidious to make distinctions between those who murdered gardaí and those who murdered RUC officers. This runs the risk of giving the impression to people in Northern Ireland that somehow it was acceptable to murder an RUC officer or, in any case, was less culpable than murdering a garda. We need to think very clearly and for a long time about this. People on all sides in Northern Ireland were asked to make a sacrifice and pay a very high price — and they did so. People in this part of the country should be prepared to accept that and, if asked, to make the same sort of sacrifice.