Taoiseach Micheál Martin has rejected calls for an apology by the State in respect of its conduct during the Troubles.
In a recent interview with The Irish Times, the new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Jon Burrows, had said at he would like to see the Government address the issue.
“I think they should make a major statement about the past,” he said. “I would love Ireland to say that some of their conduct during the Troubles was unjustified and unjustifiable.”
However, speaking in Tralee on Monday, at an exhibition marking the centenary of the foundation of Fianna Fáil and flanked by Kerry’s two Fianna Fáil TDs, Minister for Children, Disabilty and Equality Norma Foley and Michael Cahill, Martin rejected the suggestion.
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“I wouldn’t accept that. That is not something we would be apologising for,” he said.
He said the Irish government had “fought tooth and nail against the Provisional IRA”, and that it was time now to hear from the paramilitaries’ representatives “and those who endorsed the paramilitaries of the past”.
The Kenova Report and debate last week, had detailed how the Provisional IRA had been “a scourge on their own community”, he said.
Sinn Féin, he suggested, should apologise for the activities of the Provisional IRA “specifically”, rather than generally expressing regret that people lost their lives.
There had correctly been a focus on collusion between British state forces and loyalist paramilitaries as well as on miscarriages of justice, he said.
“But equally, now the time has come for those who were apologists for the Provisional IRA and loyalist paramilitaries to bring closure to their victims and apologise specifically for what they did.”
Martin was speaking at the opening of an exhibition. The exhibition is called Soldiers of Destiny, Fianna Fáil in Kerry 1926-1933.
Curated by historian Dr Owen O’Shea and supported by the Royal Irish Academy, the exhibition details the rapid rise of the party in Kerry in the 1920s and 1930s.
It is one of a programme of events celebrating the founding of the party.
The exhibition tells the story of Fianna Fáil in Kerry from its foundation in May 1926 to the general election of 1933 when the party’s vote in the Kerry constituency was the highest in the entire country.
Among the party’s early objectives, highlighted in the posters on display, was a commitment to bring forward rapid legislation “that no tenant should be obliged to pay excessive rent”.
Asked about the party record 100 years later, Martin said the party’s founders would be proud of what had been achieved, economically and industrially.
In relation to the rents commitments referenced in the poster he said the party continued to act on the issue, citing the Government’s most recent moves on the regulation of tenancies and the rental market.
