Former president Mary McAleese has said that the controversy surrounding Minister of Finance Máirtín Ó Muilleoir as the result of the latest NAMA revelations will not impact on the Good Friday Agreement.
Dr McAleese said the controversy regarding the Northern Ireland Sinn Féin politician and the call for him to step down due to the latest Nama disclosures were just part of the “day-to-day up and down of everyday politics.” She said the the Good Friday Agreement had survived far more difficult challenges.
Nama controversy
The Northern Assembly’s finance committee agreed this week that Mr Ó Muilleoir should stand aside, pending the outcome of a probe into allegations that loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson was “coached” by ex-Sinn Féin MLA Dáithí McKay on how to give evidence against former DUP leader Peter Robinson.
Apart from Sinn Féin finance committee member Caitriona Ruane, all other members of the committee, from the DUP, the Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP and the Traditional Unionist Voice parties, said Mr Ó Muilleoir should quit his ministerial post until the inquiry is completed.
The committee met to discuss the claim that Mr McKay and a Co Antrim Sinn Féin member Thomas O’Hara, were involved in a conspiracy with Mr Bryson.
Mr McKay resigned as a Sinn Féin MLA as a result of the claims, and he and Mr O’Hara were suspended from the party.
It is alleged Mr Bryson was allowed claim to the finance committee last September that Mr Robinson was to gain financially over the £1.2 billion purchase of Nama’s Northern Ireland portfolio by American company, Cerberus.
Mr Robinson dismissed that claim as “scurrilous and ill-founded”.
Issues regarding Mr Ó Muilleoir were raised because he was named in one of the transcripts of Twitter postings which indicated that Mr Bryson was “coached” on how to give evidence against Mr Robinson.
‘Broader picture’
Speaking at the Daniel O’Connell Summer School in Cahersiveen in Co Kerry, Dr McAleese said she was not getting “too excited” about the controversy.
She said people needed to look at “the broader picture” with regard to the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Good Friday Agreement.
“If that episode (the Ó Muilleoir controversy) would bring down the Good Friday Agreement, I would say it was not built on very robust terms.
“Let’s look some of the stuff that the Good Friday Agreement has already survived and I think of the solidarity that manifested itself particularly around the outrageous murder of two young soldiers (Mark Quinsey and Patrick Azimkar) by whatever they call themselves now, the Real IRA.”
Dr McAleese said the double shooting of the two young sappers outside the Masserene Barracks in Co Antrim in 2000 had the potential to destabilise the Good Friday Agreement as loyalist paramilitaries were not on ceasefire at the time.
“I know only too well because Martin (Dr McAleese’s husband) spent the next 24 hours on the phone, phoning every loyalist he knew and every loyalist that he didn’t know, persuading them that the Good Friday agreement was our way forward ,” she said.
“He argued that tit for tat was going to help unravel the Good Friday Agreement and if they reacted, that was precisely what the people who killed the two soldiers wanted and a lot of people were doing the same thing.
“And in that moment, the rush of solidarity among the unionist and nationalist, republican and loyalists communities was such that it was evident that the Good Friday Agreement was working as it should be.”
Dr McAleese said events regarding Mr Ó Muilleoir should be allowed take their course so that the truth emerges about what happened between members of Sinn Féin and Mr Bryson.
She said that she is certain that the controversy will “absolutely not” derail the Good Friday Agreement.
