Victims Support Rally in Dublin - UUP Deputy Leader calls for full, independent and international inquiry into Irish State dealings with Provisional IRA
UUP Assembly Deputy-Leader and MLA for Newry and Armagh Danny Kennedy today addressed the victims support rally in Dublin. Speaking to those who made the trip to Dublin to demonstrate, Mr Kennedy said in a speech outside the Irish Parliament:
“As many of us gather today outside Leinster House, the seat of Parliamentary democracy in the Irish Republic, some have questioned why we have made the journey from Northern Ireland to protest. Some have suggested that we have no right to be here, or that we are simply here to cause trouble or incite trouble.
Others have concluded that we should simply be ignored as irrelevant – that we are a side-show, that we are not worth anyone’s notice, that people have moved on.
Some more sinister types have actively campaigned against our presence here today, fearing perhaps we might damage their own positions of influence either in this Parliament or in this State. They are mostly hardened republicans, but we are well used to dealing with these people and we will not be deterred.
As to the charge of causing or inciting trouble - Nothing could be further from the truth. We come in peaceful protest. We come as a peace loving people, who wish to remind those in this part of the island of Ireland of the murder, maiming and attempted ethnic cleansing which was carried out in their name for well over 35 years against innocent people of all religions in Northern Ireland.
We also come to try to ensure that those responsible for those foul deeds will not be rewarded by the population here in any mistaken belief that it can help bring lasting peace in Northern Ireland.
We have in our parade today given pride of place to the relatives of innocent victims of the bloody sectarian murder and acts of genocide practised against the Protestant population of Northern Ireland. We are also pleased to welcome the presence of relatives of members of the security forces from this State who suffered at the hands of the same evil republican terrorists. However, we also acknowledge that innocent lives were lost in this State and in this city as a result of terrorism. Let me be quite specific –no act of terrorism or no act of murder is ever justified.
Last weekend in this great and handsome city, built chiefly by our British forefathers, Sinn Fein/ IRA held their annual conference and tried to convince the electorate down here (and Unionists back home) of their peaceful intentions and democratic values. We simply say today that we believe that their assurances are hollow and their promises dishonest. The recent report of the International Monitoring Commission confirmed that their (SF/IRA) illegal organisation was still in tact, still armed and up to its neck in criminality – MAKING THEM UNFIT FOR GOVERNMENT.
The curious thing is that the Irish Prime Minister has publicly confirmed that he believes them to be unfit for Government in this jurisdiction, but he does seem intent in forcing the same crowd into power in Northern Ireland. Perhaps the electorate here might want to reflect on the double standards at play here. Sadly, those double standards are not new.
Many of us in this rally here today can cast our minds back to the late 1960’s and the part played by politicians and leading personalities in this state in the setting up and arming of the Provisional IRA which was to have such dreadful and fearful consequences for the people of Northern Ireland.
Encouraged by those politicians and given licence by the illegal claims then contained in Articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution the Provisional IRA wreaked havoc with their vicious murder campaign and bombings and shootings. We come today to remind the people of this state of these FACTS. Republicans would have us air brush these things away, but we who lived through those days will never allow them to do so.
With quiet dignity, the relatives here today, representing as they do literally thousands of innocent victims, and supported by the many who have come from all over Northern Ireland and from parts of this Republic, ask the people of this State to ensure that the people responsible for these crimes will not be rewarded or given credence. Their bloody past cannot be swept under the carpet.
That chiefly is our reason for being here, but the role of those in Government and high places in this state who acted as the political midwives of the IRA, deserves and demands closer examination.
I therefore call today for a FULL, INDEPENDENT, INTERNATIONAL INQUIRY into those events to expose at last to the world the part played by leading individuals in this State which ultimately led to the campaign of murder and mayhem carried out by the IRA.
We do not seek revenge – we simply ask for justice. We will accept nothing less.”