Man whose father and uncle were both shot dead by the IRA says that having Sinn Fein First Minister of Northern Ireland is a sign 'society has lost its moral compass'

​​Rev Alan Irwin was reacting to news that the former Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill now looks poised to become the outright First Minister of Northern Ireland, after the leader of the DUP signalled the time has come to resurrect the Province’s power-sharing government.

During the Troubles, the IRA killed roughly 1,800 or so people and maimed thousands more through its campaign of bombings and gun attacks, with the biggest single group of its victims being civilians.

• Just the facts: As pro-IRA chanting spreads across Ireland here are the hard numbers behind the IRA's insurrection

Sinn Fein, a party which was long regarded as having been the IRA’s political wing, has only grown in popularity since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

Back then it garnered 17.6% of the vote (behind the SDLP, UUP and DUP, in that order).

But by the time of the 2022 Assembly election it had 29% of the vote, making it the biggest party by a clear margin.

Michelle O’Neill’s now-dead father Brendan Doris was a republican paramilitary, as was her cousin Tony Doris (killed by the military while on a shooting mission in Co Tyrone in 1991), and cousin Gareth Doris (caught and jailed after bombing Coalisland police station in 1997 – and later convicted of being part of a diesel-laundering gang in east Tyrone 20 years later).

As well as honouring dead IRA volunteers, such as enforcer and alleged Northern Bank robber Bobby Storey, Ms O’Neill has said that there was “no alternative” to the group’s bloody campaign.

Rev Irwin, a Church of Ireland canon based in Lack, Co Fermanagh, experienced the shooting dead of his uncle Fred (a council waste worker and part-time UDR member) in 1979 by the IRA, then his father Thomas (a sewage plant worker and also a part-time UDR man) in 1986, also by the IRA.

On the prospect of a Sinn Fein First Minister, he said it is a source of "wonder" that society has become so "morally bankrupt".

• Pressure increases on John Finucane over upcoming 'South Armagh Volunteers Commemoration'

• Images emerge of crowd of mourners at new republican funeral procession

"Society in many ways has lost its moral compass," said Rev Irwin.

"It's a shame for Northern Ireland's democracy that this is where we are. But then that's the outworking of the Belfast Agreement."

He said that the 1998 deal has permitted "those who carried out murder to be honoured, and their heinous crimes glorified", without anybody facing any sanctions.

"By voting for Sinn Fein, they [the republican electorate] need to answer the question: Do they support that stance of Sinn Fein, that murder was justified, that terrorists are to be honoured, and their heinous crimes to be continually glorified?

"By voting for that party, do they support that mantra? Either society has a moral compass to know what's right and wrong, or it doesn't – do you understand where I'm coming from?

"I certainly wouldn't want someone from a unionist perspective to be standing up leading my country who believed that murder was right.

"There's no difference between republican terrorism and loyalist terrorism, at the end of the day.

"Who knows? Maybe in 10 years time or 20 years time we'll be told the terrorism of the last 30, 40-plus years was 'The Second War of Irish Independence'."

A common explanation advanced by those who became involved in paramilitarism is that they had seen friends or relatives hurt or killed in the course of the Troubles.

This, said Rev Irwin, is "a feeble argument that society has accepted... it's a feeble argument to say 'this was visited on me, therefore I had to do something' – there was always an alternative to murder".