SINN FEIN must prove its opposition to criminality by urging its supporters to hand over the IRA gang who killed a 33-year-old Roman Catholic outside a bar in Belfast, Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, said yesterday.

Mr Ahern said that Sinn Fein’s approach to the killing of Robert McCartney, which has caused outrage in nationalist areas of Belfast, would be seen as a litmus test of whether republicans were prepared to renounce criminality and turn their backs on violence.

Speaking as his Foreign Minister met Mr McCartney’s family in Dublin, Mr Ahern told the Irish parliament that “there are people who can resolve the McCartney murder very quickly”. Up to 70 people are alleged to have been inside Magennis’s bar last month when a row broke out between Mr McCartney and a notorious group of IRA members from the republican Short Strand area.

After stabbing Mr McCartney to death on the pavement outside, where they even gouged out one of his eyes, republicans ordered witnesses not to co-operate with police. Despite statements from Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, of Sinn Fein, in support of the family’s “quest for justice”, Mr McCartney’s family believe that the IRA has continued to intimidate witnesses.

Referring to the IRA’s apparent “clean-up operation”, Mr Ahern told the Dail: “Not only were these people [IRA members] there, they had the audacity to go back in and sweep the place clean, which is the most horrendous thing. It’s bad enough killing people, but to do that . . .

“Dealing with the PSNI [Police Service of Northern Ireland] is the only way we can stop the bully boys and the thugs, and little heroes in their own areas that mete out punishment beatings.”

Paula McCartney, the dead man’s sister, said yesterday that she was encouraged that the Irish Government had pledged its support to their cause. “We wanted to know that we had the support of the Irish Government in our quest for justice and after meeting with them we now can go home content in the knowledge that they are supporting us,” she said.

The IRA unit responsible for Mr McCartney’s death were once revered as freedom fighters, but are now looked upon with disgust and fear by their community, whose 3,000 inhabitants live behind a huge metal “peace line” separating them from 60,000 Protestant neighbours. The IRA men include the terrorist group’s former “officer commanding” in Belfast, another man said to have thrown his wife off a balcony and a suspected paedophile.

The unit is also credited with introducing a punishment shooting known as the “Padre Pio”, where youths have their hands tied together before they are shot through both wrists. The punishment is named after an Italian monk who bore the stigmata of Jesus’s wounds from the Cross.

Sinn Fein has organised a series of meetings with residents and has urged them to stay calm while Mr McCartney’s killers are ejected from the republican movement. The dead man’s family have said that they do not want the killers harmed but brought to justice before the courts.

Mrs McCartney’s articulate appeals for the murderers to be brought to justice have served to intensify the pressure on Sinn Fein, which has suffered one of the most difficult weeks in the party’s 100-year history.

Nearly £3 million of suspected IRA money has been seized by Irish police investigating money-laundering, and those arrested include Tom Hanlon, a former Sinn Fein councillor in Cork, and another Sinn Fein activist. Both have been released without charge. Phil Flynn, one of Ireland’s most respected bankers and a former Sinn Fein vice-president, has also been questioned on a voluntary basis.

Irish police were still seeking to establish last night whether any of the money seized is linked to the robbery of £26.5 million from the Northern Bank in Belfast before Christmas, which has been blamed on the IRA.

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