[ad_1]
The credibility of the Public Accounts Committee is now in doubt due to Brian Stanley’s tweet “glorifying” the Provos and his inappropriate apology, the Taoiseach has stated.
And I think you need to reflect on that, ”he added, seeming to be close to asking Mr. Stanley to consider his position, which means a resignation would be necessary to restore the PAC’s position.
The Taoiseach said Stanley’s apology was not enough and that his 2017 tweet about Leo Varadkar was homophobic in his opinion and that of many others. The situation had worsened.
Sinn Féin had to abandon its narrative that the riots were “a just war,” he added, because it was no such thing.
“I don’t think his apology was broad enough,” Micheál Martin said in Dublin on Friday afternoon.
“The central issue is the glorification of paramilitary events of the kind you spoke of that resulted in the deaths of so many people,” he said, referring to the 1979 Narrow Water explosions that killed 18 members of the Parachute Regiment.
“The loved ones of those who died are still alive. And I think it was very insulting to the victims and upsetting, ”he declared at Trinity College.
“In the context of all of us wanting to address inherited issues in a sensitive way, it was a terrible judgment.”
But worse than that, Mr. Martin said, was the fact that on that very day, August 27, 1979, Lord Mountbattten at “a horrible event” at Mullaghmore.
“It was a crime against humanity,” said Mr. Martin. “And I find unacceptable the inability of the party and the Sinn Féin leadership to unequivocally condemn this crime against humanity.”
Two young children killed on the fishing boat, along with Lord Mountbatten and members of his family, Martin said, adding that the loss of life was important from a moral perspective.
“It is also important from the perspective of informing a younger generation that they were not old enough at the time, that this was a terrible crime against humanity.”
He appeared to refer indirectly to the murder of Belfast lawyer Pat Finucane, and the British government this week rejected a public inquiry into the 1989 murder, amid allegations of collusion.
The behavior of Stanley and Sinn Féin in comparing Narrow Water with the Kilmichael incident in the War of Independence “should be denounced; otherwise, the broader credibility of investigating other murders and other unacceptable events, carried out over 30 years, is questioned.
“I think we need a greater degree of unequivocal condemnation from the Sinn Féin leadership on these issues, and not try to sum it up and excuse it under the generic term ‘conflict’.
“That doesn’t work as far as I’m concerned.”
In the homophobic tweet about the election of Varadkar as leader of Fine Gael, Marin said: “I think it has made the situation worse.
“I don’t quite understand your explanation in relation to that particular tweet, but it clearly had homophobic inferences. That’s not just my perspective, it’s that of many people reading that particular tweet.
“I think the credibility of the Public Accounts Committee is in doubt. And I think you need to reflect on that, in terms of the issues that have come up and the way you have dealt with it.
“I was not entirely satisfied with the nature of the apology that was made, because it is part of a larger Sinn Féin agenda to essentially justify the narrative of the last 40 years. That’s a problem for me. “
Mr. Martin said it was a matter of making sure that the younger generations growing up in this country “are not fooled, they are not fooled, thinking that all these actions of the last years of the last century were glorious. They were far from it.
And that’s the underlying agenda of Sinn Féin when they tweet the way MP Stanley did, and when they make various statements about the past.
“Everything is designed to create this idea of an unbroken chain between the period of the War of Independence and a more modern period. And it’s also designed to create a narrative that it was somehow a just war. It was not a just war.
“There were some terrible and sordid events perpetrated by the Provisional IRA that cannot be justified in any way. And I think they need to fix that. They need to address that problem in a more comprehensive way than they have. “
Stanley made time to speak to make a personal statement to the Dáil on December 15.
Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said she met Stanley today.
She said: “We discussed ongoing public comments related to the tweets you posted and a radio interview you gave in March.
“At my request, Teachta Stanley will be taking next week to be with her family; for whom this period of public controversy and comment has proven very difficult.”
He said that Mr. Stanley has written to Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl to “request time to make a complete personal statement to Dáil on December 15.”
Stanley’s wife has criticized coverage of the controversy over her husband’s tweets and comments.
Client Caroline Dwane Stanley made the comments on Facebook where she argued that when Sinn Féin enters the government it should withdraw all public funds from RTÉ.
Laois-Offaly TD Mr Stanley has made headlines for a tweet he posted last weekend about the deaths of British soldiers in Ireland and another in 2017 that included a bizarre comment referring to Varadkar’s sexuality.
Stanley apologized for the tweet about the British soldiers, but insisted he need not apologize for the post about Varadkar, citing his own years of campaigning for gay rights.
Stanley has since deleted his Twitter account.
On the other hand, in recent days a radio interview of the beginning of the pandemic also emerged in which he suggested that it might be possible to contract Covid-19 by eating chicken imported from China. In the Midlands 103 interview, Mr. Stanley admitted that he didn’t know if that posed a risk, but added: “I wouldn’t have it for lunch, would I?”
Ms. Dwane Stanley posted a headline on Facebook showing that her husband was on track to run a 5,000 vote surplus in the general election last February.
She wrote: “Put that in your pipe RTÉ, FG and Irish Independent Gutter paper.”
In the comments below the post, he added: “When SF enters the government, one of the first things it should do is remove all public funds from RTÉ.”
She added: “End there (sic) the exorbitant payment.”
Sinn Féin told Independent.ie this afternoon that it will not withdraw funds from RTÉ if it enters government.
Ms. Dwane Stanley was added to the Laois County Council in 2011 when her husband won his position in Dáil.
She was subsequently elected to the Board of Directors in both 2014 and 2019.
Online editors
[ad_2]