In 2004, a fierce confrontation erupted between Irish government leaders Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen and Sinn Féin representatives Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. The dispute stemmed from allegations of IRA criminality and Sinn Féin's accusations of government attempts to undermine the party.
Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen had a furious row with Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in 2004 about IRA criminality. Photograph: Eric LukeThe row led to an extraordinary confrontation between Sinn Féin and the Irish government in Belfast in March 2004, even allowing for the restrained style of the official note of the meeting.
However, Ahern rejected the Sinn Féin figures’ arguments that the government had a strategy to undermine the party - but the newspaper reports quoted by Adams were accurate, he said. Furious, McGuinness said McDowell “didn’t know what he was talking about”, which prompted “further robust exchanges” - civil service-speak for a furious row – between the two of them.
Despite the exchanges, the government needed to keep Sinn Fein onboard, amid renewed pressure to release the men jailed for killing Det Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare in 1996.
IRA Sinn Féin Irish Government Bertie Ahern Brian Cowen Gerry Adams Martin Mcguinness
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