Minister for Justice Michael McDowell yesterday urged Sinn Féin politicians to admit that the IRA is involved in criminal activity after Garda Commissioner Noel Conroy said that money recovered by gardaí in Cork was stolen in the Northern Bank raid.
Mr McDowell said that Mr Conroy's confirmation that money seized by gardaí in Cork was stolen by the IRA had serious consequences for the republican movement and its involvement in democratic politics on this island.
Mr Conroy said at a Garda/PSNI-organised seminar on cross-Border crime on Wednesday that he was satisfied that gardaí would be able to show that money recovered in Cork was part of the £26.5 million taken in the Belfast bank raid last December.
Yesterday, Mr McDowell welcomed Mr Conroy's comments and said that they had confirmed earlier intelligence which he had received from the commissioner that the money was indeed part of the proceeds of that crime carried out by the IRA. "In the last number of months, the gardaí have painstakingly gone through the currency that was seized in Cork and I am now glad to be in a position to confirm what I always hoped would be the case, that there is now admissible evidence that the money was in the bank on the day of the raid."
Mr McDowell declined to say what evidence there was to link the Cork money and the Northern Bank raid because he didn't wish to prejudice any future prosecutions, but he said that gardaí would reveal the link "in the fullness of time".
Asked about alleged IRA chief of staff Thomas "Slab" Murphy's denial of any link with properties in Manchester raided last week by the North's Assets Recovery Agency, Mr McDowell said that he would allow the Irish people make up their own minds on that.
