25 years of Good Friday Agreement: Former SDLP leading light rebuffs 'tenuous claims' about Sinn Fein's past enthusiasm for 1998 deal

​Mark Durkan, a former deputy first minister, recalled that in March of 1998, Sinn Fein was doing the political equivalent of "heckling" the SDLP for even discussing arrangements for a devolved assembly, and that Sinn Fein posters had gone up around the country saying: "No return to Stormont!"

Mr Durkan said it was the SDLP "first and foremost" among all the parties which had been pushing for the agreement.

He said the UUP had also shown resistance to things like the North-South Ministerial Council during negotiations, which it later went on to accept.

Asked about the position Sinn Fein are taking at the moment, of hailing the 1998 agreement and being keen to associate the party with the deal ahead of its 25th anniversary, Mr Durkan said: "Well, it's what Sinn Fein do.

"They obviously try to build up their own narrative to try and claim things for themselves which, a close study of events at the time would say don't stand up.

"But I welcome the fact Sinn Fein now claim to be such adherents to the Good Friday Agreement, as they claim to be.

"I remember a time post-agreement when the SDLP still would've been getting a lot of criticism from people in Sinn Fein, with accusations that the agreement wasn't what it should be, and the SDLP had bottled it, et cetera.

"There's an observation that irony in politics is often just hypocrisy with panache.

"And when we see so many different people now claiming not just affinity with the Good Friday Agreement but authorship of it, I'm reminded of that.

"But Sinn Fein aren't alone in some of their tenuous claims."

For example, Mr Durkan said there are "people who were completely opposed to the Good Friday Agreement, and opposed it for many years, who are now calling it in aid in all sorts of ways for their position" – a reference to the DUP, which is arguing that the Protocol has damaged the 1998 deal.

He also recalled that Sinn Fein members had opposed the Patten Reforms to the RUC, "making that opposition flet in various council chambers, because of course decisions had to be made about setting up local DIstrict Policing Partnerships".

He added that "it was the case that several Sinn Fein councillors were quite graphic in the terms in which they stated their opposition to these moves and their caution, not just to SDLP members, but to any possible members of the public who might consider taking up positions as independents on those policing partnerships".

Sinn Fein has been invited to respond.