Haughey sanctioned three top secret meetings with SF

A FIANNA Fail deputation including one TD had three formal meetings in 1988 with senior Sinn Fein figures including Mr Gerry Adams. The top secret meetings were sanctioned by Mr Charles Haughey, then Taoiseach of a minority government.

The Fianna Fail delegation was made up of Mr Dermot Ahern TD, party adviser Dr Martin Mansergh, and national executive member Mr Richie Healy.

The Sinn Fein representatives were Mr Adams, Mr Pat Doherty, and Mr Mitchel McLaughlin. The meetings took place in the Redemptorist monastery in Dundalk.

At the time Sinn Fein was having a controversial series of meetings with the SDLP. Father Alex Reid, of the Clonard monastery in Belfast, had privately urged Mr Haughey to mirror what the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, was doing in Northern Ireland, so that Sinn Fein could be given a Southern nationalist perspective from Fianna Fail.

Mr Ahern describes the first meeting in a book, The Fight for Peace, by Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick, which is to be published today. A priest had said he would say a prayer before leaving the room: "I remember during the prayer I felt it was very eerie in the way it was being done, but I was very conscious that it was a momentous occasion because it was obviously top secret.

"Sinn Fein tended to talk a lot about history, the 1798 rebellion, things like that. I thought it was our role to convince them that opinion in the Republic had moved on," Mr Ahern told The Irish Times.

Between the second and third meeting "there was a horrendous bomb where a number of soldiers were blown up by the IRA", Mr Ahern said. He and Mr Healy debated whether the contacts should continue. "We had difficulties about meeting these people, I want to say." The meetings continued.

Most of the talking was done by Mr Adams and Dr Mansergh. "It was quite obvious to me," Mr Ahern says in The Fight for Peace, "that Adams, Doherty and McLaughlin were people who were on a hook and wanted to get off the hook, while at the same time not giving on the core principles they felt very strongly about.

"One of the things that convinced us was something which came out very strongly from Gerry Adams himself; that he was going into his 40s, that he'd seen nothing but violence from his early life. He was endeavouring to ensure that his children and his children's children didn't go through that in the years ahead."

Mr Ahern told The Irish Times they were worried about the contact becoming known. "Haughey was in a minority government. He would not have lasted five minutes if word had got out."

During the period of the talks, Mr Haughey was asked in the Dail by Mr Austin Deasy if the Government was in contact with Sinn Fein. "Haughey said no member of the Government was in contact," Mr Ahern said.

The Co Louth deputy said the Fianna Fail group met Sinn Fein three times and not two, as stated in The Fight for Peace. The contact came to an end when the SDLP Sinn Fein talks ended.