The Labour leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, said the group of fanatics who bombed Omagh were trying to steal an opportunity for peace and a better life away from the Irish people.
"And it is exactly this fact, that at a time of so much hope for the future, a small band of people were determined to murder and maim in an attempt to condemn us for ever to the horrors of the past that has made the senseless carnage of Omagh so different, so much worse than that which has gone before.
"And let there be no doubt in any citizen's mind regarding the intentions of the evil perpetrators of the Omagh bombing.
"It was more than an attack on the people of a Tyrone town, it was an attack on a democratic society. "It was an attack on the popularly expressed will of all the people of Ireland. In short, it was an act of fascism," Mr Quinn said.
He added that given the result of the referendums on the Belfast Agreement, there could be no ambiguity, in any quarter, regarding the use of violence for political objectives.
"The old, but invalid, justification for armed struggle traditionally espoused by the republican movement has, at long last, been consigned to the pages of history by the Irish people who expressed their voice clearly and freely in the referendums on May 22nd.
"It is time that the republican movement publicly recognised this fact and the logic which flows from it."
Mr Quinn said the statement made by Mr Gerry Adams represented a significant development, coming as it did on the eve of President Clinton's visit and shortly before the reconvening of the Assembly. Violence could never be resorted to in the future by political parties to advance their own cause, and he believed Mr Adams's words pointed to that conclusion.
But, Mr Quinn added, he knew that many people would want to have that conclusion confirmed by Sinn Fein and its supporters in the coming days and weeks.