A prominent campaigner against the referendum on the International Criminal Court was criticised yesterday for refusing to repudiate a "deeply offensive" remark by a Christian group also advocating a No vote.
Mr Rory O'Hanlon declined to distance himself from a comment made this week that Christians voting for the International Criminal Court (ICC) would be tantamount to Jews voting for the Third Reich.
The remark was made at a press conference last Tuesday by Mrs Elizabeth Mahon, representing Women for the Third Millennium.
The conference was organised by the Christian Solidarity Party. Mr O'Hanlon was not present and is not a member of the party, although he has campaigned in the past against divorce, which the Christian Solidarity Party also opposed.
Mr O'Hanlon is campaigning for a No vote in the referendum on the International Criminal Court.
He was asked yesterday by the Fine Gael TD, Mr Alan Shatter, to rebut the comments during a discussion on LM/FM's Loosetalk programme.
Mr Shatter said the comparison was "grossly offensive as the Third Reich had perpetrated one of the grossest acts of genocide on the Jewish people".
Mr O'Hanlon replied that the comment was "not very discreetly placed but I understand what the speaker had in mind . . . that we are playing into the hands of people over whom we would have no control if we subscribed to this referendum".
Asked by the interviewer again whether he distanced himself from the comment, Mr O'Hanlon said he would need to study the words in print before he could decide whether they were taken to be offensive or intended to be offensive.
Pressed by Mr Shatter, Mr O'Hanlon said the speaker had been saying that it was "just as outrageous for people to support the new proposals for the ICC as it would have been for persecuted people anywhere to support the establishment of a court that might be used against them".