Revelations about Sinn Fein's criminality should cause their removal from Executive - TUV
15 June 2010
Statement by TUV Leader Jim Allister QC:-
“Though today there is massive focus on the Saville Inquiry, recent revelations of IRA/Sinn Fein involvement in a huge €200m counterfeiting operation in the Republic, suggest there is an urgent need for a no holes barred investigation into Sinn Fein’s continued involvement in serious criminality. http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ira-linked-to-8364200m-fake-cash-operation-2219006.html
“Sinn Fein’s admission to government was premised on assurances, and an abundance of propaganda, that IRA/Sinn Fein had abandoned criminality and the IMC and others dutifully obliged with ‘clean bills of health’. Now, we find that last Tuesday the Gardai, in collaboration with Interpol, uncovered a massive Euro counterfeiting operation in Co Laois, run by Sinn Fein and IRA members.
“Has our political process become so sanitised of self respect and regard for probity that this massive default by Sinn Fein will be merely brushed under the carpet? Will expediency once more overcome decency? I have today written to the First Minister laying down this challenge:
Dear First Minister,
I refer you to the account on 13th June 2010 in the Independent in Dublin of a Gardai find of a massive IRA counterfeiting operation in County Laois. http://www.independent.ie/national-news/ira-linked-to-8364200m-fake-cash-operat
ion-2219006.html
I trust you will agree the matters referred to suggest most sinister and serious criminality, involving both Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein personnel. Given the supposed abandonment of criminality by IRA/Sinn Fein and your sustaining of them in government in acceptance of their bona fides, can you provide your assessment, as First Minister, of the impact of the events in County Laois on both the credibility of Sinn Fein's devotion to lawful pursuits and on the viability of your present coalition with Sinn Fein.
Yours sincerely,
“If, as this discovery suggests, Sinn Fein is indeed implicated in such international criminality, then how can any self-respecting democrat continue to sustain them in government? There must be no cover-up about the Co Laois operation, rather the political action, promised at the time Sinn Fein was admitted to government, must be initiated to remove them from the Executive because of their default and association with criminality. There should be no place in the Northern Ireland Executive for counterfeit democrats.”
