Minister for foreign affairs Brian Cowen told Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness to “show some respect” to taoiseach Bertie Ahern during a furious row in 2004 over IRA criminality, State files show.
The year had got off to a difficult start when Police Service of Northern Ireland officers stopped a bid by IRA members to kidnap, torture and kill dissident republican Bobby Tohill from a Belfast bar in February 2004.
The Tohill kidnapping and other incidents provoked furious criticism from Progressive Democrats’ minister for justice Michael McDowell, who compared Sinn Fein repeatedly to the Nazis.
The row led to an extraordinary confrontation between Sinn Féin and the Irish government in Belfast in March 2004, even allowing for the restrained style of the official note of the meeting.
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Adams kicked off the row by reading newspaper reports quoting government sources as saying that republicans were involved in crime, adding that some people in the Irish government were trying “to undermine Sinn Féin by criminalising it”.
The Sinn Fein leader said he resented “being depicted as a criminal”, while McGuinness said McDowell’s “irresponsible comments” were being used by anti-Belfast Agreement unionists in a bid to exclude Sinn Féin from talks.
However, Ahern rejected the Sinn Féin figures’ arguments that the government had a strategy to undermine the party - but the newspaper reports quoted by Adams were accurate, he said.
“He knew the details, in particular the involvement of the Belfast Provisional IRA,” he told Adams and McGuinness, which led to “sharp exchanges” and Cowen telling them to “show some respect”.
McDowell weighed in at this point, supporting the claim that there was continuing criminality, and addressing the Sinn Féin leaders directly: “I know it and you know it. Don’t try and cod me.”
Furious, McGuinness said McDowell “didn’t know what he was talking about”, which prompted “further robust exchanges” - civil service-speak for a furious row – between the two of them.
Cowen then claimed that Sinn Féin had previously accused Fianna Fáil of corruption, though, interestingly, Adams denied making that accusation. However, Ahern said he had no doubt that Adams had done so, and quoted examples.
Four men were charged with kidnapping Tohill, but went on the run after getting bail. Later, they were caught and jailed for up to eight years. Tohill refused to testify against them, sought clemency from the judge and said they were his friends.
Despite the exchanges, the government needed to keep Sinn Fein onboard, amid renewed pressure to release the men jailed for killing Det Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare in 1996.
Sinn Féin had consistently demanded the release of the four convicted of the killing - Kevin Walsh and Michael O’Neill, both from Patrickswell, Jeremiah Sheehy from Rathkeale, and Pearse McAuley from Strabane - under the Belfast Agreement.
The government had rejected this argument, fighting it all the way to the Supreme Court. There, they won by argument that they did not have to release the men, who had been convicted of manslaughter.
However, the issue returned to the table in the negotiations to win final IRA decommissioning, and news that the government was considering the matter again leaked in mid-2004.
In a difficult letter to Det Garda McCabe’s widow Anne in June 2004, McDowell insisted that releases would only be considered if there was a “complete and permanent ending” of the IRA’s actions.
“I very much realise that what I am relating to you is of small comfort to you in your continuing great loss. I trust you will be able to see that the government’s objective is nothing short of the realisation of lasting peace on the island of Ireland,” he wrote.
Eventually, the four were made to serve their sentences in full and were released in 2007 and 2009, while Sinn Féin demands for concessions for others wanted for the killing in Adare were rejected, too.
