Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Diaspora, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has raised the continued imprisonment of John Downey in Belmarsh Prison, with the T\u00e1naiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Eamon Gilmore, in the D\u00e1il today.<\/p>\n
Crowe, who is also a member of the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, used his parliamentary question time with the T\u00e1naiste to raise the issue and called on him to raise the issue with the British Government and request John\u2019s immediate release.<\/p>\n
Deputy Crowe said:<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn Downey is a member of Sinn F\u00e9in and a long-time supporter of the peace process, and his arrest goes against the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement and breaches the commitments that the British Government gave at Weston Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cI discussed John\u2019s arrest with the T\u00e1naiste in the D\u00e1il today and I welcome his commitment to follow John\u2019s case closely and to ensure that he receives all the consular assistance he needs.<\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, the T\u00e1naiste and the government need to ensure that John Downey is released and allowed to return home to his family immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cJohn\u2019s arrest and treatment represents a departure from what was previously agreed by both governments. All this is doing is undermining the peace process and it doesn\u2019t benefit anyone, accept those who want the peace process to fail.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe T\u00e1naiste needs to strongly remind the British Government of the commitments it signed up to, and that his Government won\u2019t sit idly by while they break these mutually agreed guarantees.\u201d<\/p>\n
ENDS<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Diaspora, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, has raised the continued imprisonment of John Downey in Belmarsh Prison, with the T\u00e1naiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Eamon Gilmore, in the D\u00e1il today. Crowe, who is also a member of the Joint Committee on the Implementation of the Good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,45,37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-friday-agreement","category-otrs","category-reconciliation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1190,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756\/revisions\/1190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}