Member's statement: IRA Violence: Matt Carthy TD
Member's statement by Mr Gareth Wilson on .
- MLA
- Mr Gareth Wilson
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 9 March 2026
- Type
- Member's statement
- Business
- Members' Statements
- Heading
- IRA Violence: Matt Carthy TD
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5452834
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Last week, Sinn Féin TD Matt Carthy claimed that there is not:
"an instance where bombing a country ended up resulting in a better situation."
I ask the House just to let that sink in. Mr Carthy appears to have forgotten which party he represents. In making that statement, he inadvertently exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of Sinn Féin. Through his lapse of memory, Mr Carthy highlights the folly of the IRA's bombing campaign across Northern Ireland and mainland Great Britain. There was certainly no betterment from the Narrow Water bombing, in which 18 British soldiers were so callously murdered by the IRA, nor from the Corry Square police station mortar attack in Newry, when nine RUC officers were murdered and many others injured. No better situation emerged from the rubble of the countless town-centre bombs planted and detonated by the IRA during the Troubles, including attacks in Markethill and on the Glenanne army base. There was certainly no betterment for the families who lost loved ones to under-car booby-trap bombs planted to murder people as they left their home for an honest day's work or returned to their vehicle at the end of it. I think especially of the late Charles Armstrong, who was murdered in such a fashion as he left a meeting of Armagh City and District Council at the Palace in Armagh city. When I served as lord mayor, I regularly told his story as I hosted guests in the room that is named in his memory. There was no betterment. Mr Carthy is correct in one respect: far from bringing improvement, those acts were cruel and bloodthirsty atrocities. They tore holes in families and communities, and the pain and trauma remain decades later. The First Minister, in fact, would do well to endorse her colleague's words, instead of repeating the tired claim that there was "no alternative" to IRA violence. A far more honest assessment would simply be this: there was no justification for IRA bombing.
332 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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