@Chris Mc: I can only assume you are talking about the killing of Mountbatten and those aboard with him, including the awful killing of two children. Nowhere in his tweet did he reference or condone that killing, so I fail to see why you would bring it up. The IRA existed because our country was occupied. That may be an uncomfortable truth for many, but you can understand why they existed, without condoning all their actions. Reality is awash with nuance, even if contemporary society discourse doesn’t seem to allow this.

@Chris Mc: That was an unrelated operation, Brian Stanley did not tweet about or even refer to the assassination of Mountbatten in any way shape or form.

@Diarmaid Twomey: “The IRA existed because our country was occupied” so what were they doing in Adare Co Limerick 1996 when Jerry McCabe was murdered in cold blood.

@Denis Ryan: Fundraising. Guns and semtex cost money.

@Denis Ryan: Your comment is the problem with social media and reactive discourse. You’re after equating my understanding of why the IRA et al existed 100 years ago, and less so in 1979, with me forgiving the murder of a Garda twenty odd years ago? That’s an appallingly disingenuous comment to make. Drama doesn’t permit nuance again I see.

@Chris Mc: If you/we are going to be totally honest about this, Stanley made no mention of any other IRA operation that day and there were many. He simply made a very clear and honest paralell between the Kilmichael and Warrenpoint ambushes.

while we at it – try googling the ‘Times’ report of the Kilmichael ambush on the morning after in 1920 – and get a bit of perspective about all of this.

@Chris Mc: @Chris Mc: Does this mean next years1916 celebrations are cancelled, seeing as how so many innocent civilians and policemen and British soldiers were killed…. or murdered?

Killed or murdered of course depends on your point of view, and that period in time in our history when political murder was “good murder’ …….’cause we we were only doing it for our freedom….partial freedom excuse me…after we got that any further political murder was bad.

@Diarmaid Twomey: Disingenuous like agreeing that the TD could hold up Narrow water as a shining example of action against the occupiers but that he didnt mention the murder of two innocents with Mountbatten the same day makes it all ok. Murder is murder be it 1979 or 1996 or Guildford or Birmingham. We are not talking about military targets, we are talking about a public servant travelling under the harp who was riddled in his car in Adare. Dress it up anyway you want and infer nuance any way you want. The ring leader of the “operation” in Adare then stabbed his partner a TD from Cavan Monaghan in front of her kids years later. That’s the type of people you are defending.

@John Dublin: so do big houses.

@John Mulligan: They do. So do islands, yachts and gated mansions.

@John Mulligan: Who has a big house?

@Denis Ryan: more to the point what was SF TD Martin Ferris doing in 2009 collecting Detective McCabe’s murderer from prison?

@Denis Ryan: I’m going to stop responding to you after this, because your generalisations and red top commentary really doesn’t deserve embellishment. But I will leave you with this one thought – by your logic, any group or the actions of that group, however noble and life changing, can be entirely discredited or admonished due to the actions of any one individual, in any time period. I mean, if a member of BLM in 100 years was to murder a police officer, would that discredit the movement today? Do you not recognise the British army as a legitimate force today due to the actions of their individual officers in Ireland last century? To the warmongering and colonial oppression they inflicted on populations across the world? Citing the despicable crime of murder and using the character of the murderer to somehow re-write history is beyond despicable. Try living in our ancestors times when their houses, farms and cities were burnt to the ground regularly. When they were made experience a famine by a foreign occupier who looted the state while they starved. Try living in the north of Ireland in the later part of the 20th century when nationalists were treated like dirt. And after you have done that, then try telling all those people then that their struggle was illegitimate, their deaths for nothing, because of the actions of a murderer in Adare decades later.

@Angela McCarthy: what has the following line from Stanley to do with a comparison of those two attacks? “Pity for everyone they were such slow learners.”

@Seán O’Loughlin: Mary Lou for starters. Doesn’t Gerry have several?

@Diarmaid Twomey: Oh the irony. That’s exactly what Brian Stanley was doing when he equated Kilmichael to Narrow water 69 years later. Now you have gone back as far as the famine. Republicans act like anything done in the name of the cause before 1998 was legitimate and it is not. I have not made this discussion personally or insulted you but you have compared my logic to red tops.

@GrumpyAulFella: Why was Michael Martin and Charlie Flangan wearing a poppy a symbol of terrorism throughout the world.

@Diarmaid Twomey: great, great points here.

@Denis Ryan: Do you recognise the rep of Ireland as a legitimate independent state? If so, why? If not why?

@Teresa Ryan: Yes I do, a legitimate republic controlled by elected officials not a council of 12 who make decisions in back rooms. The whole lot of them are not worth one hundredth of a Seamus Mallon or a John Hume.

@Denis Ryan: Even Michael Coilins and Eamon De Valera ?

@Seamus Donnelly: I think Micheal Collins and De Valera had a mandate from the Irish people.

@Denis Ryan: A mandate to do what exactly?

@Denis Ryan: Did they run in the 1918 election on the promise to go to war?

@Denis Ryan: What about Hugh O’Neill, Robert Emmet, Wolfe Tone, Padraig Pearse, James Connolly and every other Irish man and woman who rose up against the British over the centuries?

@John Dublin: —And then why were his murderers publicly applauded and given a standing ovation at a particular Ard Fheis??

@Diarmaid Twomey: you are on the money. It suits a narrative that the troubles were a rogue campaign of terror from the nationalists on this island. Far removed from the truth. Sinn Féin need to be pro active on the issue of IRA operations that resulted in deaths and be the example of legacy and reconciliation imo.

@GrumpyAulFella: Partion and british military rule dragged on for nearly 80 years after 1920 -so they the occupiers were slow learners – they didnt begin, but had to be dragged into our peace process, so even though they were 80 years apart – they were very similar IRA operations with similar casualty results. God, your a grumpy fella

@Mr T: totally and completely agree!!!

@Mr T: “if others apologize for a shortcoming they still go for the jugular”. You do realise that you are doing above EXACTLY what you accuse SF of doing, right ?

@Mr T: fully agree. Hypocrisy of the highest and most transparent order. Terrorists to the core.

@I Speak My Mind: I’ll see your terrorists and raise you my freedom fighters.

@Mr T: well done, that rant just swung me. I will never trust Sinn Fein again. From now on I will never trust any politician but you!

@Kevin Burke: No he’s not who are you to say that

@MickN:

What the tweet proves is
“U can take SF out of the PIRA but u can’t take the PIRA out of SF”
No different to Cullinane “Up The RA”

@MickN:

So is the support and still have among there elected repsersentative in NI and the ROI convicted terorists, the Stanley tweet and SF support of murder, bombing, kidanaping, the murder of member of our gaurdai in the line of duty.

@Declan Sweeney: Are you on about the IRA of 1920s or 1970′s ? because both armies used them tactics.

@Declan Sweeney: Sean Lemass is thought to be the best Taoiseach this country has ever had. Lemass was IRA.

@Eamon Flanagan: Fodder for unionists? When have unionists ever needed fodder to despise us, our traditions, our flag, our language?

@Seán O’Loughlin: whether you consider those occupying forces legitimate targets or not entirely misses the point

@Eamon Flanagan: The alternative in being in debt for the rest of my life and not owning a house until I’m in my 60s. And if I get sick and have to go into hospital, there’s a possibility I won’t even make it to then under a FFG government. A bit more important to me than a tweet that the Kevin Myers and Ruth Dudley Edwards of Ireland care about.

@Eamon Flanagan: I hope you remember that post when the next poll figures come in.

indeed indeed slow learners FG/FF!

@Denis Ryan: That’s funny cause I’ve seen the tweet and he wrote elite.

@Seán O’Loughlin: Apologies, I was sure it said elective but you are right. Off to specsavers I go.

@frank_1916: McDowell should be made apologise for being McDowell.

@frank_1916: Stanleyneeds a slap, not for the tweet but for giving FFG and the media a diversion when they were and are hanging themselves

SF really need to learn the power of silence.

@Heisen berg1: It was less than 50 years before the start of the troubles.

@Heisen berg1: how different? Look at the recent actions of Britain in regard to the Finnucane case, or read the current case in Belfast of the loyalist paramilitary. The tans are alive and well in the North, just more covertly ran by British war machine and dressed up as loyalist paramilitaries!

@GrumpyAulFella: Resign? For what? For being an Irish republican? Stop would ye! As for McElduff, he was a clown. But anyone who knows him, and plenty do from the unionist community, know he hasn’t a sectarian bone in his body and his attempt at humour backfired because he picked up the “wrong” loaf of bread for his gag. Meanwhile every 11th of July, we see the spectacle of DUP politicians posing for photos in front of bonfires draped in tricolours, effigies and photos of nationalist politicians.

@John Dublin: no, resign for the insensitivity of his tweet and for those who died. It’s the same as the McEkduff disaster, making light of an atrocity that left people dead. If the Shinners want Woulfe to resign for a game of golf while they got away with funeralgate they can’t now get away with this. If McElduff went then Stanley has to go. Anyone can see that. It’s the same problem.

@John Dublin:

Well according to SF that period is gone, the PIRA is gone, the armed strugle is over, maybe some should ask Stanley is the armed strugle over.

@GrumpyAulFella: Christ, if every politician had to resign because they said something that upset someone else!! Get over it.

@Declan Sweeney: I must have missed the memo that said we had to decommission our tongues also.