The son of a Portlaoise Prison officer who was murdered by the IRA 34 years ago has hit out at a TV3 program which will air about Gerry Adams tonight.
Broadcaster Vincent Browne says that peace in the North wouldn’t have happened when it did without Gerry Adams – and this is something Brian Stack’s son strongly disagrees with.
Speaking to the Irish Independent, Austin Stack compared such views to congratulating an arsonist on “calling a fire brigade after the house is burned down”.
He also said he wouldn’t like to see people “singing Gerry Adams’s praises” in the days leading up to him finally stepping down as Sinn Féin president after more than three decades.
Part one of veteran broadcaster Browne’s documentary on the outgoing Sinn Féin leader, entitled ‘Gerry Adams: War, Peace and Politics’ will be broadcast tonight.
Promoting the programme, Mr Browne said he has known Mr Adams for more than 40 years and found him to be “one of the most fascinating people in Irish public life during that time”.
He said Mr Adams was “very much involved in the IRA campaign of atrocity, murder, and criminality” but added that from the early 1980s “he began to seek a way out of violence and bring the Republican movement with him”.
Mr Browne added: “Without him, the atrocities almost certainly would have happened anyway, but without him peace wouldn’t have happened when it did.”
But speaking to the Irish Independent, Austin Stack branded Mr Browne’s assessment of Mr Adams’s role “revisionist”.
He said: “Gerry Adams is someone who saw that the IRA was defeated and that they had to create another way to get their objectives.
“It’s a bit like somebody saying that an arsonist who starts a fire and then calls the fire brigade is to be congratulated on calling a fire brigade after the house is burned down.”
Brian Stack, the former Chief Officer at Portlaoise prison, was shot in Dublin in March 1983 and died 18 months later.
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