'IRA are ghastly murderous thugs and we must remember that - starting with Gerry Adams'

Lord Robathan, a Tory peer who served as minister of state in the Northern Ireland Office in 2013/14, was speaking in a House of Lords debate about the lack of a government in Northern Ireland.

He initially spoke about Brexit, and about how people had "talked a lot of nonsense about how there might be a hard border in Northern Ireland... there has never been a hard border across the island of Ireland".

The former SAS soldier said: "Friends of mine spent many, many years trying to stop the illegal border crossings, mostly smuggling and also terrorists, across the internal border, and they completely failed."

Lord Robathan described the Windsor Framework, which was meant to end the DUP boycott of Stormont, as "flawed, but it is the best deal we will get".

He then said: "If I might move on slightly to the broader issue, I really deprecate the fact that Sinn Féin is the largest party in the Assembly now – or if the Assembly would sit. I hate it.

"Sinn Féin was always described, and I think still is, as the political wing of the IRA.

"Now, it sticks in my craw that anybody – and a lot of very decent people do – that anybody should vote for Sinn Fein, because of that reason.

"The IRA are now somewhat romanticised in Northern Ireland.

"Actually they are a bunch of ghastly, murderous thugs, and we should remember that – starting with Gerry Adams, who should, not in this world, perhaps in the next, will answer for the deaths of people like Jean McConville.

"But I'd say to my fellow unionists: we live in the world as it is, and we are in the art of the possible."

As such, he urged a return to powersharing, saying: "The world changes; we all have to change… that is the best way forward, for all its defects."

​The News Letter attempted to contact Sinn Fein to see if it or Mr Adams wished to respond, but there had been no reply at time of writing.

Mr Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA, and has never been convicted of involvement in IRA violence.

More from this reporter:

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

• Good Friday Agreement at 25: Graphs show how death toll from Troubles violence changed in after 1998 deal