Ahern/Durkan meeting: IRA members cannot be allowed to create "privatised" criminal operations following the organisation's decision to abandon its campaign, SDLP leader Mark Durkan has said.
Speaking in Dublin after meeting Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, Mr Durkan said: "I think it is important that we don't have a notion of privatisation, that we don't have a private army out there for political purposes any more, but we are allowed a privatised army for criminal, or pseudo-criminal, actions. It is also important that people aren't allowed to do whatever they want provided that it is on a personal, rather than a corporate, basis." Many northern nationalists will be keeping their "critical faculties" open to verify that the IRA pledge to stand down is honoured, he said.
The IRA's decision to abandon its 35-year campaign, destroy arms and end all other actions justified the SDLP's stand since the Good Friday agreement, he said.
"People know that we were very frustrated by suspension, by the stop-start nature of the process ever since the agreement. We have always said there needed to be a clean, complete and clear break with the paramilitary past. A lot of people told us that was neither necessary nor possible. The fact that yesterday happened shows that it was necessary, that it was possible," Mr Durkan added.
"A lot of people in the past, even people who were pro-agreement, said it was going too far that the IRA should, or could, do the sort of thing they did yesterday. Nobody advocated it more than the SDLP. Therefore, nobody welcomed it more yesterday than the SDLP," he said.
The two governments must now make sure there was not a political vacuum until the Independent Monitoring Commission completed its second report on the IRA next January.
"I think it is important that neither parties nor government decide that there is nothing that we can do and that we can only mark time, because other difficulties will arise if we do that," he said.
The British government can publish its full plan to reduce the security presence in Northern Ireland, while work can be "teed up" for the restoration of the institutions.
Mr Durkan continued: "David Trimble and the UUP were given a lot of messing time, Sinn Féin and the IRA were given a lot of space and time to drag their feet as well. There is a danger that the DUP think they are entitled to it now. I hope the DUP realise they can take things forward for the community they represent. If they wait too long there is a danger that some of their own people will lose their appetite for devolution and say, 'Peace from republicans and rule from Britain. That's not a bad deal.' The DUP needs to move sooner, rather than playing it long.
"There is an attitude in the DUP that David Trimble and the UUP were allowed to create a lot of difficulties in this process and nobody shifted them on too much. Sinn Féin and the IRA have been allowed to drag their feet at different stages so who is going to rush us now? That has been part of the problem. I don't think that it is any of our interests to take any longer than is necessary."
