Analysis: 'Plan' to set Garda killers free

The killers of Irish police officer Jerry McCabe were to be released as part of a plan to restore the Northern Ireland assembly. BBC Northern Ireland security editor Brian Rowan examines the background to a "deal to end paramilitarism".

In June 1996, the IRA moved quickly to wash its hands of what happened at Adare in County Limerick.

This was just four months after the collapse of the original ceasefire, blown away in a bomb explosion at Canary Wharf in London.

Garda Jerry McCabe was killed during an attempted robbery

In Adare, Garda Jerry McCabe was killed and another officer wounded and, initially, the IRA denied any involvement in the shootings and the attempted robbery.

That position was later revised.

In a statement the IRA said: "Our investigations have now established that individual volunteers were party to what happened in Adare. We wish to make our position clear.

"The shootings at Adare were in direct contravention of IRA orders. Such shootings were not - nor cannot be - sanctioned by the IRA leadership.

Those who carried out these shootings did so to the detriment of the republican cause."

Within a year, the IRA ceasefire had been restored and then came the Good Friday Agreement and, with it, the emptying of the prisons as loyalists and republicans were freed in a response to the new "peace".

But the Irish Government made clear the IRA killers of Garda McCabe would not be freed and the four men convicted of his manslaughter remain inside Castlerea Prison in County Roscommon.

Last autumn, there were political moves to try to restore devolution in Northern Ireland.

The new buzz phrase was "acts of completion" and the deal was about ending paramilitarism.

Significant decommissioning

Gerry Adams pointed republicans towards a "peaceful direction" and the IRA carried out its most significant act of decommissioning so far.

But then things turned sour. The Ulster Unionist leader was unhappy that only scant detail was given on decommissioning and he put the planned sequence on hold.

The British and Irish Governments also stalled and, it was in this breakdown, that the plan to release the Castlerea prisoners disappeared.

But sources who have spoken to the BBC describe this plan as "a huge, untold story".

Then on Tuesday, the Sinn Fein president, Gerry Adams, speaking in Dublin, confirmed that the release of the prisoners was indeed part of the agreed sequence last October.

He made his comments just before the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, was due to face questions on this most controversial issue in the Irish parliament.

Last week, when the BBC reported the releases were to be part of last autumn's failed deal, the Department of Justice in Dublin at first made no comment.

But in a later statement, it said the Irish Government had always made it clear that it "would not authorise any such release in the context of continued Provisional (IRA) paramilitarism".

The Irish government has been asked to make a full statement

But what was last October's deal meant to be about?

The answer - an end to paramilitarism.

And sources are adamant that but for that unforeseen development when Trimble pulled the deal, the Castlerea prisoners would have been freed.

Adams' comments in Dublin on Tuesday appear to confirm this.

There is nothing to suggest that the Ulster Unionists knew anything about the release plan, nor indeed, were they aware that Sinn Fein had received a written commitment on fresh assembly elections in Northern Ireland - this time from Downing Street.

But all of this is history now.

There are new talks going on in the background - the first, tentative moves at exploring the possibility of repairing the broken down deal of last October.

The "usual suspects" - to quote one source - are involved.

That means the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, his chief of staff Jonathan Powell, the Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, Foreign Minister Brian Cowen, and senior official Michael Collins and, for Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and what the party calls its "core group".

If all of this goes anywhere, then one of the issues to be settled will be the release of the Castlerea prisoners.

And, for some, the very thought of this touches the rawest of nerves.