Below is TUV leader Jim Allister’s speech during yesterday’s debate on The Disappeared:

Simultaneously this afternoon, in the two jurisdictions on this island, examination is being extended to two of the most horrendous aspects of the IRA's cruel campaign. The Dublin Administration are, quite properly, being faced with the effects and the conduct of the IRA's genocide campaign in the Fermanagh border area against the Protestant community and, in this Assembly, we are debating the horrendous campaign of the IRA, in the main against its own community, in respect of the disappeared.

In this debate it is significant that, whereas there has been one token contribution from the party that knows the most about this matter, it has been but one token contribution, and that, of course, was a contribution full of weasel words. It focused on reading to the House the utterly disingenuous statement of the IRA in 1999, indeed, almost as a eulogy to what they had to say, with the protestation that it involved apology, that it was full and that it was ample. Go tell that to the family of Charlie Armstrong, who, to this day, the IRA deny disappearing.

Go tell that to the family of Gerry Evans, whom to this day it denies disappearing. Go tell that to the family of Jean McConville.

Members will remember that, when they last debated the issue, Mr McLaughlin gave us the benefit of his contribution. He ran away from this testing challenge: would he withdraw the assertion that he made back in 2005 that the murder — the "killing", as he called it — of Jean McConville was not a criminal act? He failed then to withdraw that, and he fails now. That tells us all that we need to know about the true heart of Sinn Féin and what it really thinks of those whom its IRA butchered and murdered. It cannot even bring itself to acknowledge something as elementary as the fact that Jean McConville was murdered and it was a criminal act, rather than the corollary that inescapably is that it was the lawful act of the IRA. It is that seminal issue that it utterly fails to address that tells us all that there is to be told about the politics and the soul of Sinn Féin.

Others can speak to that far more eloquently than I can. The relatives of some of the victims can do it far better. Recently, we had Oliver McVeigh — brother of Mr McVeigh, one of the disappeared — challenging Adams and McGuinness to use their influence directly to get the information from the IRA people involved. He said:

"They've got to take the lead on this. They've got to start knocking on the doors of those who know precisely what happened."

Mr Adams has done the easy bit: he has issued a statement. He needs to do the hardest bit. Seamus McKendry, the son-in-law of Jean McConville, said of Adams's attempts to wriggle on the matter:

"The man lives in a fantasy world. As far as I’m concerned, he’s the world’s greatest fabricator. He’s trying to con all the people, now he’s conned himself."

And so the con goes on that the IRA did not murder Jean McConville. In the words of Mr McLaughlin, it was not a criminal act. What hypocrisy. What cant. What weasel words that speak so ill of those who utter them.

Terrorism