Maurice Hayes (Independent)

——but there may be reasons for that. I spoke about this before and people did not like it and they are not going to like it again. We are in severe danger of applying a different moral tariff to the murder of a policeman north of the Border and the murder of a policeman south of the Border. While I think of Mrs. McCabe I think also of the families of 307 members of the RUC who were murdered. They were not killed in glorious battle or shoot-outs. They were shot in the back, shot in front of their families, killed on their way back from the golf club, shot having a quiet drink in a pub. We want to think of those people too and they have paid a price. Senator Mansergh is right when he says there are things that have to be done. As Michael Longley said in his poem, Ceasefire:

I get down on my knees and do what must be done

And kiss Achilles' hand, the killer of my son.

It is hard, it is painful, it is terrible but I plead with Senators to think of those RUC widows and ask themselves what they would think if somehow their suffering was to be discounted because they lived on the wrong side of the Border or the wrong side of a struggle.