Member's statement: Garvaghy Road: Provisional IRA
Member's statement by Mr Timothy Gaston on .
- MLA
- Mr Timothy Gaston
- Party at the time
- Traditional Unionist Voice
- Date
- 20 October 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- Garvaghy Road: Provisional IRA
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5798368
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Nineteen years ago today, Paul Quinn, a 21-year-old man, was beaten to death with iron and nail-studded bars that broke every major bone in his body. The Independent Monitoring Commission found that the Provisional IRA was responsible for his murder. Eleven years ago today, the Government published a security assessment that found that the Provisional IRA retained an army council that oversaw the Provisional IRA and Sinn Féin with an overarching strategy. The assessment stated that it retained "'departments' with specific responsibilities" and that it still had weapons that had not been decommissioned. That is the nature of the party that holds the First Minister post and with which those who sit on the Executive associate themselves. It is not nice to think of a 21-year-old beaten to death by the paramilitary wing of a party in the Northern Ireland Government. Since the illegal protest against the legal Drumcree parade, nationalists across the House have claimed repeatedly that what they were involved in was some sort of non-violent resistance. That fairy tale exploded in the High Court yesterday. We now know that republicans had firearms. We now know that there was a belief among the police that they would shoot officers who dared to move in and do their job and enforce the law. We now know that petrol bombs were ready to be deployed against the police had they gone in. Most tellingly for the House, we now know that the police were actively considering the feelings of the Provisional IRA in how to police that parade. To some Members I say this: when you took to the street and stood beside the bomber Breandán Mac Cionnaith, the new chief constable of the Garvaghy Road, and when you linked arms with people such as the Provisional IRA's chief of staff, Martin Lynch, and when you engaged with those people, you were not involved in a modern-day recreation of Martin Luther King in 1960s America. No, everyone who stood on that road, whether they were aware of it or not, did so in the shadow of gunmen. Do not tell me that that represents progress or is some sort of by-product of peace. Armed men in the background, police weighing up their reaction and politicians calling it "non-violent resistance": welcome to Northern Ireland in 2026. Is that what this place has to offer?
393 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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