Shane Ross (Independent)

While the IRA has given up its arms, it seems to have handed over a legacy of criminality, which is yielding an extraordinary amount of money to an organisation which will perpetuate it. I am worried that the Government is not pursuing this with the vigour we should expect. I am worried because I suspect that, unbeknown to us, things are going on behind the scenes that may lead to a certain tolerance of criminality so that the people involved may be brought further down the road towards a political solution. That is a real danger.

Some obvious recent cases point towards the apparent existence — I will say no more than that — of money laundering in various forms in Ireland. It seems that we know that the criminal empire is massive but the paucity of arrests after all these raids is striking. We know that hotels, pubs and cash businesses throughout the island are run by these subversives but the high-profile cases and charges one might expect have not happened. One wonders whether for political reasons, for what both Governments consider to be the greater good, these people are not pursued with the vigour that one might expect for such wrongdoers. It may well be that organs of the State are pursuing organisations involved in this criminality but it may also be the case that the individuals involved in this criminality are, for some reason, not pursued with the necessary vigour.