BEING a teenager in the IRA in the 1950s was the "stuff of storybooks", Mr De Rossa told the court. He said that he and a number of other members of the boy scouts organisation, Na Fianna, joined the IRA in 1956.
"It was a bit of an adventure at 16 years of age to be part of a secret army going on secret camps and meetings and so on. It was the stuff of storybooks," he said in reply to Mr Patrick MacEntee SC, for Independent Newspapers.
He had joined a section of the IRA which he presumed was parts of the Dublin organisation. Asked by Mr MacEntee who was the officer commanding in charge of the section, Mr De Rossa replied: "I don't know I ought name names of members of an illegal organisation at the time. I'm not even sure I can recall them accurately."
Pressed by Mr MacEntee as to why he wouldn't name names, Mr De Rossa said he was not sure he could recall them accurately.
"I'm not here to talk about the IRA. I'm here to talk about a libel made by Eamon Dunphy that I am a criminal, not about the IRA of 40 odd years ago," he added.
Mr MacEntee said he was trying to find out what sort of an organisation the Workers' Party was, when Mr De Rossa was connected with it, and what its links were with violence and criminality. He was asking the witness to say who was the officer commanding in Dublin when he joined the IRA at 16. Mr De Rossa: "I don't know."
Mr MacEntee: "Is it that you don't know or you won't tell us?"
Mr De Rossa: "No, I don't recall."
Asked if he recalled the names of any other officers of the IRA at the time, Mr De Rossa said he remembered a training officer, but not the person who had trained him. He also recalled the name of another person who operated in a training capacity in his section.
Asked by Mr MacEntee to name these two people, Mr De Rossa said he would have to ask the judge. Addressing Mr Justice Moriarty, he said: "If you say I should name names I will name names".
The judge said the defence was entitled to cross examine with some reasonable latitude. It seemed inconceivable that the DPP would contemplate steps against somebody who might have been involved in a period of time of that antiquity.
Mr De Rossa then said the name of the person who was a training officer in his section was Patrick McLoughlin, and the other person he remembered as being a senior training officer was Sean Garland.
Asked what rank Mr Garland held in the IRA at that time, Mr De Rossa said he had no idea but he understood him to be a training officer. Mr MacEntee asked if the witness had never discussed these matters with Mr Garland years later when he (Mr De Rossa) was president of the WP and Mr Garland its general secretary. Mr De Rossa said no.
Asked about the first time he was arrested, in 1957, Mr De Rossa said it was in the Wicklow Mountains, "up around Glencree". After serving a two month sentence in Mountjoy, he was interned in the Curragh where he spent nearly two years. He did not know the ranks of any of his fellow internees. Once you were imprisoned you lost your rank, and some of those interned were not even IRA members.
He joined Sinn Fein in 1957 and helped out in the general election campaign, shortly before his arrest. There were four SF TDs elected then one was Ruairi O Bradaigh who was elected in Roscommon.
Asked when he left SF, Mr De Rossa said he never left. Mr MacEntee asked if when he was a member of SF was he also a member of the IRA. Mr De Rossa said he was not.
Mr MacEntee asked if people who had been in the IRA like Sean Garland and Ruairi O Bradaigh were also members of SF.
Mr De Rossa said that Tomas MacGiolla was arrested as a member of the SF ard chomhairle. Mr O Bradaigh was arrested on the Border as a member of an IRA unit.
Mr De Rossa said he resigned from the IRA in 1960. He was still a Republican and stayed on with SF.
Mr MacEntee asked if he could recall a document being circulated among SF activists in the early 1970s for the purpose of having a debate about the reform of the Republican movement.
My De Rossa said he had never received such a document. Mr MacEntee asked whether the terms Group A and Group B meant anything to him. Mr De Rossa said he thought they were blood groups but apart from that, no.