Sinn Féin have ‘over glorified’ the violence of the Troubles - Tánaiste

Sinn Féin have failed to deal with issues of the past and “over glorified” the violence of the Troubles, Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said.

Speaking at a St Patrick’s Day event at the JFK Library in Boston on Saturday, Mr Martin was asked about the possibility of Fianna Fáil going into Government with Sinn Féin. He said they’re “not the most likely” party with whom Fianna Fáil would enter coalition because of their stance on economic and social issues.

“Policy has to be the successful foundation for a coalition government into the future. We will engage but for us, Sinn Féin’s economic policy, our view, they’ve taken a very anti-enterprise position on many issues,” he said, citing the example of their opposition to the EU-Canada CETA trade deal.

“I would have a big question mark over their commitment to enterprise and a whole range of other issues, so they’re not the most likely party that we would go in with because of their economic and social position”

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He also said the party had to “deal with issues of the past”.

“I genuinely believe they are… recreating and rewriting the past, very wrongly, as a someone who has an interest in history, with a view to justifying what were terrible atrocities and terrible acts of violence,” he said.

The Tánaiste said it was likely that some of the people involved in the attempted murder of senior PSNI officer John Caldwell in February were younger, and were children when the Belfast Agreement was signed.

“We have to take the gun out of the narrative of Irish politics for once and for all. We have to not glorify the gun and Sinn Féin have in my view over-glorified what happened in the last 30 years, and haven’t responded sufficiently to the victims and violence that they were responsible for. I think they need to deal with that,” he said.