Appalling Murphy remarks are reminder of the savage nature of the Quinn murder and of the fact that Sinn Fein have to be in power in Stormont at all times

Paul Quinn’s murder in 2007 was barbaric: a vicious, relentless beating to death carried out by brutal men who deal in savagery.

The testimony of Paul’s mother Breege on Nolan Live last night movingly highlighted the inhumanity of the republican killers.

If Paul had died in a car crash, she said, then his tragically young death would have been easier to come to terms with. But she and Paul’s father, Stephen, in their grief had to cope with the additional agony of knowing that the killers did not even stop their attack as their victim cried out for mercy.

It was grossly inappropriate for Mr Murphy to make public allegations about Paul Quinn, let alone to have done so soon after the murder. Mary Lou McDonald, Sinn Fein president, this week said Mr Murphy had not called Paul a criminal but relented when a clip emerged of him doing so.

Mr Murphy should tell the PSNI to whom he then spoke in the IRA.

No-one has been convicted of Paul Quinn’s murder. A republican code of omerta emerges after such killings, as it did after the murder of Robert McCartney in 2005.

That murder came weeks after the Northern Bank robbery, which itself was within a few years of the Stormont spy-ring and Castlereagh break-in. No other party would be tolerated near power in any other developed nation if it had the associations Sinn Fein has had with the IRA.

Yet Sinn Fein is not only tolerated, it must be in power in Northern Ireland at all times.

It brought down Stormont, insisting among other things that Arlene Foster stand aside.

Now Stormont is back without the Tories or DUP even insisting on a mechanism to prevent such vandalism again.

Not only that they granted the core Sinn Fein demand of powerful Irish language legislation, and even let Stormont return with a UK pledge to give Sinn Fein the legacy structures it cherishes, believing that all 2,100 other republican murders will be lost in a haze of chasing the security forces.