Voters should make Ferris pay for his crassness
MARTIN Ferris, the Sinn Fein deputy for Kerry North, has once again defended his crass decision to greet the killers of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe upon their release from prison last week.
Mr Ferris, remember, will be asking thousands of Limerick voters to support him at the next general election, when the constituency becomes Kerry North/Limerick West.
Speaking on RTE radio, he claims he was thinking of Ann McCabe and her family when he decicided to turn up at the prison gates and greet Pearse McCauley and Kevin Walsh on their release. He says that the release of Republican prisoners typically brings hundreds of fellow travellers out to lay on a big welcome.
"My purpose there that morning," he told listeners, "was simply to get the lads away from the area and not have any sense of triumphalism outside the gates that would cause more hurt to Mrs McCabe and her family."
Triumphalism? Are we to take it that Mr Ferris genuinely believed it possible that some of his fellow Republicans would turn up to whoop and holler in celebration, as the two of the four men convicted of killing Jerry McCabe walked free?
Does Mr Ferris believe that the act of firing 14 rounds from an AK-47, killing a good man and seriously injuring his friend and colleague, Ben O'Sullivan, bestows some kind of status on the men who carried it out? It would appear so.
Four years ago, Jerry McCabe's killers issued a statement in which they expressed regret over their callous actions and apologised for the "hurt and grief" caused to the families of both detectives. Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, has nowinsisted that this apology was "genuine".
He also believes that these killers should have been released years earlier because they qualified as IRA prisoners under the Good Friday Agreement. In 2005, Ann McCabe rejected the statement released by the killers of her husband.
"It doesn't wash with me. It means absolutely nothing," she said. Four years on, the sickening sight of an elected Dail deputy shaking hands with two of these men seconds after their release from jail - and the refusal of Mr Adams and other Sinn Fein members, including Limerick city councillor Maurice Quinlivan to condemn Martin Ferris - leaves little room for doubt about the party's true feelings about what happened that terrible day.
We hope our readers in West Limerick who find themselves in the newconstituency next time around, will remember this infamous episode when Mr Ferris comes knocking on their door, looking for votes.
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Monday 21 May 2012
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