Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

When I pointed out these Marxist characteristics and the deeply ingrained Marxist beliefs of leading provisionals who are still in office in a debate at Trinity College, the Sinn Féin general secretary, Robbie Smyth, said "So what?" It may be a question of "so what?" and people are entitled to be Marxists, but Irish-America should ask itself what it has in common with a party whose members swan around in Armani suits in the Irish-American clubs, piling up dollars on the one hand, while at the same time it cannot tell the truth about its relationship with FARC, the European communists and the like. I wonder why Irish-America feels in any way attracted to such a body.

In all of this we must keep our moral compass. Analogies have been drawn with history and, of course, the founding fathers of our State did things to which those who want crude analogies can point to seek some sort of blessing from historical precedent. However, I believe none of the founding fathers, be they Seán Lemass, Éamon de Valera, Michael Collins, William Cosgrave or Eoin MacNeill, would ever have taken a group of people out of a bus, separated the Protestants from the Catholics and machine-gunned the Protestants. I do not believe they would have done many of the horrific things that have been done since, nor do I believe they would have done so many underhand things. We are privileged to have a copy of the 1916 Proclamation in the lobby of Leinster House. Bringing dishonour on its aims is the one thing its signatories committed themselves against. One must remember the abject departure from the standards of the 1916 Proclamation which we have had to swallow from the provisional republican movement. It is not my imagination that Galen Weston was the subject of a kidnap attempt in order to extort money by a party that includes people who now offer themselves for political office. It is not my imagination that Tiede Herrema was kidnapped. It is not my imagination that other businessmen were kidnapped and threatened and that businessmen in Northern Ireland were taken and shot simply because of who they were. This has nothing to do with the ideology of 1916. It is radically different and inferior to it.

I see people running smuggling rackets. I saw an individual who went to the Four Courts and perjured himself to get a large sum of money from The Sunday Times because it correctly described him as the IRA chief of staff. Although he perjured himself, he was countered by several witnesses, one of whom was a former member of his movement, Mr. Collins. Mr. Collins sat in the witness box and coldly informed the jury of the true state of affairs with the chief of staff of the IRA. Later, he was found on the side of a south Armagh road close to where the plaintiff lived with his head reduced, because of the ceasefire, to an unrecognisable pulp. This happened because he told the truth, puncturing the perjuring, money-grabbing exercise of the IRA chief of staff. When I recall this event, I ask the media to remember that one man had the courage to tell the truth and a Dublin jury had the courage to fling the case out. That is a serious state of affairs.