Responding to comments from Sinn Fein/IRA leader Gerry Adams ahead of his visit to the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly TUV vice-chair Keith Harbinson said:

“Adams’ comments are both factually inaccurate and deeply insulting. Those who lost loved ones at the hands of the Provisional’s terror machine will have little time for his claim that Republicans don’t seek to deny anyone their rights. The most basic and fundamental of all is the right to life. Throughout their history Irish Republicans have shown scant regard for that.

“Similarly, it ill-becomes Gerry Adams to deliver lectures on democracy and morals. It is his party which refuses to accept the democratically expressed will of the people of Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom. It was the IRA which attempted to wipe out the democratically elected government of our country 25 years ago this month, and it is still Republicans who are the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the undemocratic form of government with which our Province is lumbered – a system which denies us the democratic essentials of being able to vote a party out of office and an opposition to hold the executive to account.

“As for Adams’ economic arguments for unity, any economist worthy of the name would dismiss them out of hand. Why Northern Ireland would want to leave the protection of one of the world’s largest economies to join with a Republic which is widely acknowledged to be one of the worst hit in all of Europe by the global down turn is not for me to explain.

“However, while Unionists will rightly dismiss most of what Adams says out of hand he does make comments about the current political situation which we would do well to take note of.

“He describes the Belfast Agreement as “an opportunity to develop understanding and to advocate rationally, the benefits of Irish reunification” and, like Hillary Clinton last week, he is in no doubt about the fact that we are still being governed under the terms laid out in the Belfast Agreement describing both it and it’s near identical twin St Andrews as “important mechanisms to be built upon.”

“These comments are yet another telling reminder that Republicans do not view where we are at the present moment as a final destination but merely as a stepping stone towards a united Ireland.

“The devolution of policing and justice is an important staging post in that process. As executive minister and convicted terrorist Connor Murphy put it just last week:
“Quite clearly what we have always wanted to do is take the affairs that govern the people of Ireland in to the hands of the people in Ireland. That’s been our reason d’être for all our existence so it’s quite logical that we would want the whole system of policing and justice into the hands of local people.”

“Shame on those Unionists who facilitate such an agenda!”