The Minister for Justice has confirmed that the Taoiseach told the Sinn Féin leadership yesterday he will oppose any move to punish the party or exclude it from the political process in the wake of the Northern Bank raid.
Mr McDowell said Mr Ahern told Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness yesterday that he "is strongly opposed to a policy of exclusion or punishment, because in our view putting people into victim mode is not sensible and doesn't help in the present process". The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Dermot Ahern, said the Government and Sinn Féin had agreed on the need to move forward with the peace process, but this could only be done on the basis of "exclusively democratic peaceful means".
The Sinn Féin leadership had been asked to "reflect" on the Government's insistence that the issue of criminality be dealt with.
Mr McDowell said the Government's view that the IRA had carried out the bank robbery was based on the assessment of An Garda Síochána, and not just on that of the PSNI Chief Constable Mr Hugh Orde.
Speaking after Mr Adams had said the Taoiseach failed to back up his assertion that the Sinn Féin leadership had prior knowledge of the robbery, Mr McDowell said: "This was not a meeting at which the Government was going to explain itself, at which the Government was going to share intelligence with them, or the Government was going to set out the basis on which it had come to its conclusions."
He said the Government did not think it was appropriate to share intelligence with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
"An Garda Síochána has clearly stated and has briefed me that in their professional assessment of the present situation, firstly the Northern Bank robbery was carried out by the IRA, and secondly that the nature and scale of the operation was such that the carrying out of that operation must have had sanction and approval by the leadership of the Provisional movement."
The Government "stands by its conclusions and it has the backing of intelligence from a number of sources to justify those conclusions".
He said the talks yesterday dealt not only with the Northern Bank raid, but "with a pattern of criminality. We instanced individual incidents of that criminality. You know these cases: The Makro incident [ a major robbery outside Belfast last year], the Gallahers incident [ a major robbery of tobacco products at a Belfast warehouse last year].
"I could reel off the other incidents, for instance the rash of recent punishment beatings, which is a euphemism for tying people's hands together and shooting them through the hands, referred to in Provisional circles as a Matt Talbot punishment. Four of those have taken place since the breakdown in December.
"We brought it to the attention of the Sinn Féin people there that we had monitored closely the pattern of punishment beatings stopping when the political process required it, and resuming when the political process was in abeyance."
Mr Dermot Ahern also said Sinn Féin "have to go back and consider their position". He said the Government would wait and see what the Independent Monitoring Commission had to say about the bank robbery.
Although the Government was opposed to the imposition of sanctions on Sinn Féin, the decision on sanctions was primarily an issue for the British government.
"As you know, Sinn Féin are already subject to sanctions in relation to the Tohill incident and there may well be consequences flowing from the next IMC report."