Mary Lou McDonald's remarks criticised by widow of garda shot by IRA

Detective Jerry McCabe was shot dead by the IRA

The widow of a detective shot dead by the IRA in 1996 has criticised comments by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald that there was "no comparison" between the IRA and gangland violence.

Garda (Irish police officer) Jerry McCabe was killed and his colleague was injured during an armed raid on a post office van in Adare, County Limerick.

Four Provisional IRA members were convicted of the manslaughter of Mr McCabe.

They have been released from prison.

Ms McDonald was speaking to the radio station Newstalk in an interview which coincided with Sinn Féin's ard fheis (annual conference).

She was asked about gangland violence and said there was "no comparison" between IRA violence during the Troubles and such criminality.

"If we are going to talk about things that happened in the course of the conflict, that's one thing, that's one discussion," she said.

"As somebody who represents the north inner city of Dublin and who has seen at first hand the corrosive damage that gangland, so-called, has caused to communities, there is absolutely no comparison.

"Things that happened in the course of a very long political conflict, which thank god is now long over - we have had 25 years of peace - that there is no comparison between that and the kind of challenge -and it is an ongoing challenge to our society - that this vicious so-called gangland crime epidemic poses."

'Their way of thinking'

Mr McCabe's widow Ann criticised Ms McDonald's remarks.

The four men convicted for her husband's manslaughter were all released by 2009.

"No matter who commits murder, murder is murder", she said - adding she believed there was no difference between the IRA men who killed her husband and any other criminals.

"The IRA were up to their eyes in murder and carnage," she told BBC Radio Ulster's The Nolan Show .

"My view will never change.

"They are trying to get the new generation round to their way of thinking.

"My husband wasn't part of the Troubles at all. He was escorting money, as was his partner Ben O'Sullivan, who has sadly since passed away."

She said the Provisional IRA changed her life and her family's life forever.

"Life will never be the same again," she said.

"I have wonderful friends and family and grandkids - they keep me going but Jerry will never leave my mind.

"Not a day goes by that I don't think of him."

One of Mr McCabe's killers, Pearse McAuley, was later jailed for stabbing his estranged wife 13 times with a steak knife.

Sinn Féin held its annual conference at the weekend

The son of an Irish prison officer who was murdered by the IRA also criticised Mrs McDonald's remarks.

Austin Stack, whose father Brian was the only prison officer murdered in the Republic of Ireland during the Troubles, said there were similarities.

"What planet is she on? Murder, punishment beatings, drug dealing, protection rackets are what gangsters and IRA both do well," he tweeted.

In January 2013, then Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams apologised for Mr McCabe's killing.

Mr Adams apologised in the Dáil (lower house of Irish parliament), as he paid tribute to an officer shot dead during a robbery in his constituency.

He said the death of Detective Garda Adrian Donohoe had provoked memories of the killing of Mr McCabe and the wounding of Mr O'Sullivan.

"I want to apologise to Mrs McCabe and the McCabe family, and to Garda Ben O'Sullivan and to the families of other members of the state forces who were killed by republicans in the course of the conflict," said Mr Adams.

"I am very sorry for the pain and loss inflicted on those families. No words of mine can remove that hurt. Dreadful events cannot be undone."

The two detectives were awarded the freedom of Limerick in 2018.