SINN FEIN has had to call off a series of St Patrick’s Day fundraising events in America this week as pressure on Gerry Adams, the party’s president, spreads across the Atlantic.

The events have been downgraded to speaking engagements after Adams was advised he would not be given permission to raise money in America because the IRA has come under heavy criticism for its involvement in bank robbery, money laundering and murder.

Senior Irish-American senators have now demanded that the terrorist group disband.

The reversal in Sinn Fein’s fortunes is largely due to the unrelenting campaign mounted by the girlfriend and five sisters of Robert McCartney, a Belfast father of two knifed to death by an IRA gang six weeks ago.

Previous tours on the weeks around St Patrick’s Day — which falls on Thursday — have been lucrative for Adams, sometimes raising more than $100,000 (£52,000) from IRA supporters at black-tie events.

The hat may be discreetly passed round to cover expenses at this week’s events, but there will be no entry charge. Some backers may also feel the £26.5m raid on the Northern Bank in Belfast just before Christmas, for which the IRA has been blamed, makes the need for funds less urgent.

Since he was first granted a US visa by Bill Clinton in 1994, Adams has hogged the media limelight on American tours. This time, however, he will be overshadowed by the McCartney women, who are expected to appear on Larry King Live.

The women have also been granted an audience with President George W Bush while Adams and other Northern Irish politicians are excluded from the White House for the first time in more than a decade.

Adams will meet congressmen and senators but he can expect harsh words from some. Senator Edward Kennedy, a leading supporter of Irish nationalism, said: “There is no place for a paramilitary organisation and criminal activity in a democratic political party, and I will tell Gerry Adams that.”

Congressman Peter King, Adams’s biggest ally on Capitol Hill and a personal friend, added: “The time has come for the IRA to disband . . . I think Adams is focusing too much on preventing a split and can’t see the forest for the trees.”

The McCartney sisters and Bridgeen Hagans, their brother’s girlfriend, are likely to tell the American public about his murder and the IRA cover-up.

The incident started with an argument about a gesture at a televised football match in a pub. An IRA man claimed the gesture had been directed at his wife and cut the throat of Brendan Devine, McCartney’s friend, with a broken bottle.

When McCartney and Devine fled onto the street they were beaten with sewer rods until another IRA man stabbed them and left them to die, although Devine survived.

The women’s campaign has already driven the IRA to replace its cover-up with the expulsion of three members and an offer to shoot two of them dead if that would appease the family.

Gemma McCartney, one of the sisters who is travelling to America, described the meeting just over three weeks ago in which the sisters told two representatives of the terrorist group the names of IRA men responsible for their brother’s murder.

“We did most of the talking,” said McCartney. “The IRA men didn’t volunteer much, but they confirmed most of what we put to them from their own investigation.” Unknown to her, they had interrogated one suspect for four days until he confessed.

She added: “When we gave them the names of the men, they agreed. And then they said, ‘This is the way it is done, they can be shot’.I knew that they meant kill them.”

She admitted that her first reaction was to be tempted by the offer. “Being human, I initially thought ‘Well, that sounds good’. But I realised it was unrealistic. Shooting was too good for them. Anyway it wasn’t as simple as that — there were about 15 people involved.”

In a further embarrassment for Adams, it emerged yesterday that a former Sinn Fein election candidate had been in the bar at the time of the murder but said she had seen nothing.

The claim by Cora Groogan was contradicted by McCartney’s sister Catherine, who described a taxi driver taking her from the scene. “(He) told me that when she got into the taxi she was agitated and she said, ‘There was murder in there’. . .When he drove off she gave a big sigh of relief.”

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