Sinn Fein has the potential and capacity to become the vehicle for the attainment of republican objectives.

I think there is a huge responsibility upon governments to understand the consequence of their decisions.

We can be revisionist, and that's a good thing to be at times, but we shouldn't airbrush our history, so we can only make judgments in the objective conditions of that time.

I was leaving the Belfast court, where I had been called to answer a very flimsy charge, later dismissed. You're relatively safe in such areas in the Irish community, but to go to downtown Belfast for me is dangerous. My appearance in court had been well advertised by the police. I think it was too much of a coincidence that the people who shot me were just passing by.

There can be no such things as an Irish nationalist accepting the loyalist veto and partition. You cannot claim to be an Irish nationalist if you consent to an internal six county settlement and if you are willing to negotiate the state of Irish society with a foreign government.

You can only judge anything that happened in the times, in the times that that happened.

In the past I have defended the right of the IRA to engage in armed struggle. I did so because there was no alternative for those who would not bend the knee, or turn a blind eye to oppression, or for those who wanted a national republic.