Peter Robinson was interviewed on BBC News 24 after the Sinn Fein press conference and dismissed Martin McGuinness’ anger as ‘a comedy interlude and a farce’. He pointed out that the IMC was hardly a DUP body: the IMC being made up “a representative of Her Majesty’s Government, the Republic of Ireland’s Government and the United States. He further made the point that Lord Alderdice had been perfectly agreeable to Sinn Fein as speaker of the Assembly. With regard to the apparent clash between IMC and IIDC, he said ” John de Chastellain indicated that he had had a report that the IRA still had a range of weapons, but because the IRA with whom he has channels (as the IMC does not) denied it, and the Guards in the south had no reports of it, he would not confirm.
Robinson’s sting in the tail: “A lot of intelligence has come from people like Denis Donaldson. I’m very sure Martin McGuinness would like see were some more of that information came from”. He then pointed to his own party’s proposals to get politics back on track, suggesting that it would be a very long time before Sinn Fein were ready to resume executive government.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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