THE Minister for Social Welfare, Mr De Rossa, told the High Court yesterday he joined the IRA at 16 and was subsequently interned for nearly two years at the Curragh.
He was also imprisoned twice in Mountjoy after being arrested on IRA "route marches" in the Wicklow Mountains, Mr De Rossa said on the second day of hearing of his libel action against Independent Newspapers.
He is suing over an article by Eamon Dunphy in the Sunday Independent on December 13th, 1992.
Mr De Rossa said he resigned from the IRA in 1960 at the age of 20, when he was asked to go on active service in Northern Ireland, after coming to the conclusion that force and violence could not unite the people of the North.
He said he had no knowledge of Official IRA activity since it declared a ceasefire in 1972.
He told his own counsel Mr Paul O'Higgins SC, that he joined Na Fianna at the age of 12 in 1952.
In April 1957 he was arrested on a route march in the Wicklow Mountains. There were no arms involved. He was charged under the Offences Against the State Act with refusing to account for his movements and sentenced to two months.
While he was in jail the de Valera government introduced internment, and when his sentence was completed he was transferred to the Curragh under an internment order. He was held there until March 1959.
On his release he got involved in Sinn Fein primarily although he was still a member of the IRA, and "there was some training and so on". In 1960 he was arrested again on a route march and sentenced to three months in Mountjoy.
After he was released he was asked to go on active service in the North and refused.
He resigned from the IRA aged 20, and had never had any connection with the organisation since. He stayed on in Sinn Fein because he felt there was a radical need for change in Ireland. In the 1960s there was a major concern about housing in Dublin and Sinn Fein got involved.
Mr De Rossa said he was only intermittently employed at the time, having spent time in jail and failed to get an apprenticeship. "I regarded my time in the Curragh as my university days," he said. In 1969 he took over his father's vegetable delivery business.
In the 1970s he was involved in politics as a local activist in Finglas and Ballymun. He was seeking to help build up Official Sinn Fein as a political organisation. He stood for election to the Dail in 1977 and 1981, and was finally successful in February 1982. His election made him, ex officio, a member of the ardchomhairle of the party.