THE first reports were unequivocal. There had been a shoot-out between the Garda Early Response Unit and a gang of armed robbers on the main Dublin- Wexford road, near Ashford. One of the raiders had been killed. There were no garda casualties.
The substance of these reports appeared unchallenged. In terms of propaganda, with that first wave of news coverage it was established in the collective consciousness that these were a particularly nasty bunch of brigands, who had clearly opened fire on the police. In the circumstances, what could the Gardaí do except return fire?
Whether the distortion of the truth involved in putting this initial spin into the public domain was deliberate or not I don't know. However, the garda story had changed by the following day. "We shot first," a spokesman declared, and this was reported as if it was great news entirely by more than one newspaper. The headline on the Sunday World was as definitive as any detailed judicial inquiry could ever hope to be. HE HAD TO BE KILLED, it trumpeted, "Gunned-down Provo raider was about to blow old man's head off," the subheadline explained helpfully.
No need to read any further, then, is there? He was about to blow some old geezer's head off. Except that when you do get stuck into the detailed eye-witness accounts of what happened near Ashford, you realise that there's no evidence whatsoever that Rónán MacLochlainn was about to blow anyone's head off. In fact there was a real element of farce amid the mayhem. The dissident IRA man had indeed tried to hijack a car occupied by an elderly man and his wife. His demeanour can't have been overly threatening, however. The man's wife told MacLochlainn to go away, that her husband had a heart condition!
It isn't clear from reports precisely what MacLochlainn was doing when he was shot. However, there is no evidence whatsoever, apart from what the Gardaí have been whispering to journalists, that he would have used the gun. Nor is there any reason to believe that the (what I presume are) highly skilled marksmen of the Early Response Unit could not have shot MacLochlainn, for example, in the leg or legs.
In other words, the incident reeks of unnecessary force having been used by the Gardaí. In this respect, the inaccurate and misleading nature of their initial statements is damning. For if Rónán MacLochlainn had indeed returned fire as he went down, then the Gardaí could have stuck with the line that it was a shoot-out and no-one would have been any the wiser in relation to the sequence of the shooting. But if the raider's gun had not been used, that would be easily verified. And so another line in propaganda was required.
Did Rónán MacLochlainn have to die? Had the Gardaí decided to take someone out in advance? Did one or two members of the ERU over-react in the heat of the moment? Was the initial attempt to mislead the public deliberate? If so who was responsible for it? And if there was excessive force used, and there was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public, to what extent does the blame lie with our current Minister for Justice and the culture of his regime?
These questions need to be asked. Unfortunately they will never be answered without an independent inquiry into the incident. But this is not something that we can afford to shirk. It doesn't matter that the "dissident" IRA are seen - and rightly seen - as pariahs by the vast majority of the Irish people North and South of the border. A trigger-happy police force is a dangerous police force.
There were 30 armed gardaí involved in the operation. It should have been well within their capabilities to arrest the man, unless he had opened fire first. So why did this not happen?
PERHAPS the more hard-line elements within the Gardaí believe that they can get away with this kind of thing in the context of the Belfast Agreement. Certainly there is less sympathy than ever for the irredentists who are currently attempting to perpetuate the armed struggle. And rightly so. But the idea that this might offer anyone - the Gardaí, the RUC or the British Army - a licence to kill, is potentially explosive. What's required is the calmest, most reassured response possible. To deliver the Continuity IRA or the dissident IRA their own freshly-buried martyrs would risk disaster.
It was quite clear from the start that Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness, Pat Doherty and others, could not possibly offer to bring an end to physical force Republicanism. The demands being made on them in this regard were utterly unrealistic - no-one can kill an idea. But what they have done, very skilfully, in the cause of peace, is to bring almost the entire Sinn Féin membership with them to a point where support for the Belfast Agreement was almost unanimous at the party's specially convened Ard Fheis.
It is as close as you could possibly get to bringing an end to physical force republicanism right now. It doesn't mean that what Republicans have been calling "the war" for the past 30 years is completely over. But it does mean that it might now be possible to isolate the Continuity IRA and the dissident IRA, and to deprive them of the bedrock of public support which is essential to the functioning of a terrorist organisation.
This is the opportunity which the Belfast Agreement has created, despite its flaws. It is the best deal that could be done by all sides if a deal was to be done at all. Which is why it is imperative to support it by voting Yes, to the Belfast Agreement, north and south of the border, on May 22nd.
Of course the endorsement of the Agreement is only the beginning. And it's true that in itself it does not seriously address the sectarian or class divisions in Northern Ireland.
But it may be possible in the spirit of the Agreement to create the conditions in which the guns on both sides of the sectarian divide, as well as those of the British Army, can be taken out of the equation.
Until that happens, there is no possibility of poverty, inequality, unemployment and other class-based issues being approached in anything other than a destructive, tribal way.
I know exactly why the prospect of a Northern Assembly would give liberals and libertarians of all shades and stripes the shivers. But you've got to start somewhere.
* Niall Stokes
Editor