The Taoiseach has insisted that the four men convicted of the murder of Det Garda Jerry McCabe will serve out their sentences.
Speaking during a visit to Armagh yesterday Mr Ahern said his legal advice was that the detective's killers did not come under the Belfast Agreement's early-release scheme and would therefore serve their sentences.
Mr Ahern, who was responding to the sentences imposed by the Special Criminal Court, said he was glad that the "murderers" had been brought to justice. While they had been convicted of manslaughter rather than murder, Mr Ahern said, he would have preferred if the murder charges had succeeded.
Asked why he had used the term "murder" when the men were convicted of manslaughter, Mr Ahern said: "Jerry McCabe was murdered as far as I'm concerned."
The North's First Minister-designate, Mr David Trimble, said yesterday that the Government's line on who does and does not fall within the Belfast Agreement's early release scheme was causing concern. "I think the double standards that are being played here will only cause hurt", Mr Trimble said.
His spokesman said the First Minister was reflecting growing unionist unease at the apparent manner in which the Government was prepared to take a tough line on the murder of gardai but was not prepared to adopt a similar stance in relation to people being released early for murders committed in the North, including the killing of RUC officers.
Mr Ahern pointed out that a number of paramilitaries who had killed gardai had been released from prison in the Republic under the early-release scheme. He said he was making his comments on Det Garda McCabe's killers because his advice was that they did not come under the scheme.
However, Dr Philip McGarry, the president of the Alliance Party, said that the killers came within the ambit of the agreement and therefore would be released. He said that Mr Ahern's comments left "a sour taste in the mouth". It appeared that inconsistent standards were being applied and the Irish Government seemed to be "going outside the terms of the agreement to differentiate between prisoners North and South".
The agreement was quite explicit that all members of paramilitary groups on ceasefire should be released by July 2000. The Government could not "cherry-pick" elements of the agreement. "We have made this point to unionists, to Sinn Fein, and today we reiterate to the Irish Government that there is damage done to the integrity of the agreement itself if they, as a major signatory, appear to be reneging on a major element of it", Dr McGarry added.
