As Adams nurses his bruised ego, the IRA victims still show bottle to fight on
IT BEGAN with a humiliating gaffe from one of the Dáil’s most egotistical and out-of-touch politicians. It ended with Sinn Féin once again being placed on the back foot as its TDs found themselves being labelled “bullies” and “snipers behind the ditch”.
Gerry Adams’s remarkable claim that the ordinary pensioner forks out €30 for a bottle of wine is as believable as his assertion that he was never involved in the IRA. To be fair, it’s not quite as galling as his refusal to call for the murderers of Louth farmer Tom Oliver to be jailed. Or his failure to hand over the name of the IRA figure who he met along the Border after driving there in a blacked-out van in the company of the sons of murdered prison officer Brian Stack.
If Mr Adams had his way, these sort of stories and allegations would disappear – similar to the fate of countless IRA victims over the years.
But they won’t. Mr Adams kept a low profile in Leinster House yesterday, his ego undoubtedly bruised following his wine gaffe. He undoubtedly picked up on the sniggering and gossip bouncing around the corridors in the hours that followed. TDs remarked about how deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald has flown business class to Australia, while Adams has flown in the same class to the US – despite the party’s constant hectoring to other so-called elitist politicians.
Both leaders are of course well used to addressing lavish dinners in cities such as New York, where wealthy donors pay $500 (€422) each to hear about Sinn Féin’s decision to one day bring about a United Ireland.
Deputies too joked about the newest addition to the members’ restaurant: ‘Gerry’s wine list’. For just €30, one can pick up a bottle of the finest ShIRAz, ‘chateau de kneepcap’ or, as coined by Fine Gael’s Noel Rock, ‘provo-secco’.
But Mr Adams didn’t spend the entire day wondering about what wine to drink that evening. He released a hard-hitting statement, in which he described recent briefings by Government sources on the negotiations in the North as “malicious, shameful, and untruthful”.
Mr Adams went on to accuse Taoiseach Leo Varadkar of “behaving in a reckless way”, adding that he “should stop it and behave like a Taoiseach should behave”.
Ironically, Mr Adams’s lecture about politicians behaving in the right way was handed down just hours after his own colleague Conor Murphy once again faced allegations of compounding the pain of the grieving family of IRA victim Paul Quinn.
Mr Quinn was beaten to death in the most heinous fashion 10 years ago today by an IRA hit squad in Armagh. The gang used iron bars and other weapons to brutally break every bone in his body below the neck. The Quinn family have strongly criticised Mr Murphy, who after the murder said he was satisfied the IRA was not involved and that the victim was a “criminal”.
According to the ‘Irish News’, Mr Murphy this week rejected a call from the SDLP to “remove the slur” he cast on Mr Quinn. Mr Murphy said the “allegations are completely without any foundation”.
“I have condemned the murder of Paul Quinn and said consistently that the Quinn family deserve justice,” he told the paper.
That’s sure to bewilder Stephen and Breege Quinn, who are today wondering – after 10 years – whether that justice will ever be served.