Adams on McDowell

Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, gives his account of the meeting with Bertie Ahern

I have met the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern scores of times. He is famously affable, easy going and accommodating. He has also led Fianna Fáil into two terms of government and, given the state of the opposition and barring accidents, he appears likely to lead them into a third term. That certainly is his intention. You don't get to do that just by being affable, easy going and accommodating.

I have acknowledged the Taoiseach's contribution to the peace process on many occasions. There are clearly differences between us about how that process has developed. There are also party political differences. The trick is not to confuse the two or to let a party political concern subvert the collective responsibility to manage the peace process. That process is more important than any other issue.

In my view, which I have come to slowly and reluctantly, the Taoiseach has decided that there is little possibility of progress before the upcoming elections. He now feels free, for narrow party political and electoral reasons, to attack Sinn Féin in an aggressively destructive way, with a script taken straight from the Michael McDowell book of negative campaigning.

For almost two years now there has been an edge to the engagements between Sinn Féin and the Government. This coincides with the surge in support for Sinn Féin. But in the time since then, in fairness to the Taoiseach, when there was an effort to move things forward he applied himself to this task. There was always a slightly different atmosphere to the engagements on those rare occasions when Michael McDowell was present. His combative style, legendary opportunism and lack of principles are not ideal qualities for the chore of peace making or consensus building. Since Brian Cowan moved to Finance, Minister McDowell appears to be taking the lead more and more for the Government, certainly as a spokesperson on the North. Or on Sinn Féin.

So this week's meeting with the Government, spun by them as "high noon", a "confrontation" and so on, looked like it might be just that. In fact it wasn't. The Taoiseach had a written script. He read from it. Michael McDowell had a written script as well. He read from that. In the bits in between their readings some sense was talked. I had a view that the scripts were prepared more for the media than for us. I said so.

Incidently, Michael McDowell majored on allegations of recent so-called punishment shootings – a line taken up word for word by the Taoiseach in his encounter with Caoimhín Ó Caolaín in the Dáil last Wednesday. He told us that he closely monitored these issues. I presume the details are provided by the Northern Ireland Office or the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

I challenged him to tell us what he was going to do about these incidents and I explained to him how Sinn Féin had taken a stand against this activity, how we did so at the coal face of communities frustrated by small criminal groups, how we supported restorative justice projects and argued against physical punishments of any kind.

The Minister had no answer. Neither apparently, in spite of his "monitoring operation" was he, or the Taoiseach or the Minister of Foreign Affairs aware that a Derry man Martin Doherty was in prison because of his non-attendance at the Saville Inquiry. Martin Doherty, I am told, had not attended the Saville Inquiry when invited to do so because he had not been on the Bloody Sunday march. He is the only person to be imprisoned arising from the events of that dreadful day. I presume the Government was ignorant of Doherty's incarceration because it is so dependent on the Northern Irish Office, British intelligence, the PSNI et al for briefings.

Towards the end of the meeting I asked how we were going to describe our deliberations to the media. Following a brief discussion, the Taoiseach said that we should say that we would meet again following his meeting with the British Prime Minister.

After the meeting the Government ministers said that Martin McGuinness and I had agreed that the Sinn Féin leadership must go away and reflect on the Government's insistence that the criminality issue be dealt with. We had not agreed to that. Sinn Féin is not involved in criminality.

We are against criminality. We have no apologies to make to any political party or leadership on this issue or on the question of our stewardship of the peace process. We have never said we have all the answers and we are always willing to work with others to find answers. But when the integrity of the Sinn Féin party is attacked we will defend our party robustly.

During the meeting the Taoiseach said that the Government was opposed to sanctions. After the meeting the Minister for Foreign Affairs said that sanctions are primarily an issue for the British government.

Martin McGuinness and I challenged the Taoiseach to stand up his accusations that we had prior knowledge of the Northern Bank robbery. Reading from his script Bertie said that it was "unacceptable that there is a demand for the Government and the Taoiseach to explain itself". When pressed he said that Hugh Orde made it clear that he thought the IRA was involved. The Taoiseach formed his opinion on this on Northern Ireland Office briefings, British intelligence briefings, conversations with Tony Blair and briefings from the Garda. He said he had the period over Christmas to think about all of this. At different times, he said, he has been accused of fluffing his lines or being unclear as to the meaning of his remarks but in this case, he went on, he had made a considered statement.

And that was that. There was no effort to explain why he accused Martin and I as he did. In the course of subsequent media interviews when he expressed ignorance about Ray Burke's activities, he wasn't even asked to stand up his accusations against us.

It was the same in the Dáil the following day. The opposition didn't even lay a glove on the Taoiseach over the Ray Burke affair.

He sold them a dummy and they went along with it. The Irish Government is now involved in a full frontal attack on the integrity of Sinn Féin. We will weather that. But where does it take the process in the longer term? Michael McDowell clearly thinks that the peace process can be built without Sinn Féin. Is this the Taoiseach's view also? I hope not.