Ger Colleran, above left, sitting in for Vincent Browne, hosted last night’s Tonight with Vincent Browne on TV3 with a panel that included from left Eamon Dunphy, sociologist Mary Murphy and journalists John Waters, and Eamon Delaney.
The show opened with pre-recorded interview with Austin Stack, son of murdered prison officer Brian Stack, who had met with Gerry Adams.
Ger Colleran: “Eamon Dunphy, this is bright new Orwellian world we’ve created for ourselves isn’t it? [Gerry Adams] A Dail Deputy, leader of a major parliamentary party in opposition going around North Louth (in a car) with blacked-out windows, with a victim whose father was shot by his associates in earlier years. What kind of democracy have we now?”
Eamon Dunphy: “What’s new, what’s brand new about it, Ger?”
Colleran: “This hasn’t happened before, the last, the first I’ve heard (Eamon interrupts..)
Eamon Dunphy: “IRA in governement, going back through the decades. Sean Lemass was a good example, his brother was a killer. He was in the IRA, he was a killer. What did you think of them then?”
Collieran: “Are you equating what happened…, but no, let’s first of all, address the issue.”
Dunphy: “Let’s be clear. In the first place when the IRA were carrying out their terrorist campaign, I was one of a small number of people in the media who, let me remind you Ger, and the viewers, who went for them, full-blooded, unequivocally, every week, for every atrocity they committed. When lots of people were keeping quiet, or beng ambivalent about it. So, I’m entitled to a hearing. What I say is this. This country has been run by former terrorists and gun-men. So, the question, the loaded question about Gerry Adams going around Louth in a van is ridiculous.”
Colleran: “That’s not odd at all? You don’t think that’s odd in a modern era?”
Dunphy: “No.. , what I think is most interesting about Mr. Stack’s interview you did there was the fact that the Guards never bothered to pursue this, diligently, to effect.”
Colleran: “Yeah, I think that’s a very important point Eamonn. But if I may point out, it doesn’t surprise me at all. It has resonances from my own experience. Twenty five years, almost eactly. I got, received a telephone call from a member of the IRA, who told me to pass on information to the Gardai, at that time…. that he had put a bullet in the head of another man’s head and had killed him. The body then later turned up just outside Cork. The name of that man was John Corcoran. Not once in the period intervening, not once despite me making several public statements that I had that information, not once had the Gardai sought an interview with me. So, I accept that point Eamon, without equivocatio. But no, I want to put it to you, you’re paralleling, almost, the activities of violent republicanism, prosecuting a war of independence, post 1918 to what happened in the North, let’s say in ’69, is entirely unfounded.”
Dunphy: “Well, let me put it to you this way. In 1994, the IRA called their ceasefire, they broke it once. That’s twenty years ago, next year. They’re engaged in democratic politics on both sides of the border. The leadership of the IRA and Sinn Fein, in my opinion, that’s Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly and other leaders, both men and women., did something democratic and powerful for peace.”
Colleran: “They started abusing the people of Ireland, that’s what they did!”
Dunphy: “Well, if you want to sit there and answer your own questions…”
Colleran: “But, isn’t that the question?”
Dunphy: “No, but what I’m telling you is, this state was founded on violence, there have been murders, gun-men in office from the beginning. There have been crooks and gangsters in office. I’ll give you an example, if you want (to talk about) justice. The victims of “The Stardust”, do you remember that? An awful long time ago now, right? 48 young people, they’ve never had justice. What do you think of that?”
Colleran: “But that’s not what we’re talking about? What you’re doing now, with respect, is going off on a tangent….”
Dunphy: “What we’re talking about is a rotten state. Okay, I think Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein have the most integrity of any political party in this state.”
Colleran: “Despite the fact that their hands are dripping with blood?”
Dunphy: “Well, when is Michael Collins’ commemoration now? Beal na Bla, is that what they call it? What was Collins like?”
Colleran: “Are you putting Michael Collins on the same footing as Gerry Adams?”
Dunphy “ I actually think that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness (are) were greater men than Michael Collins.”
FIGHT!
Watch here
Thanks Shayna O’Neill
