Máiría Cahill says Timothy Gaston's questions to First Minister are ‘entirely legitimate’
Questions asked by Timothy Gaston about sexual abuse carried out by IRA members were “entirely legitimate” – as evidenced by his ability to ask them at a Stormont committee this week, Máiría Cahill has said.
The TUV MLA challenged the First Minister on claims in Ms Cahill’s book as she appeared to give evidence before MLAs on Wednesday. He was sanctioned by the Assembly’s standards committee this week over a previous meeting in 2024, where some of the same questions were ruled by the chair Paula Bradshaw not to be within the committee’s remit.
The North Antrim MLA quizzed the SF minister on comments she made about Máiría Cahill in 2018, where she said “it’s not for me to say whether I believe her”. In 2014, the Belfast woman waived her right to anonymity to give her account of alleged abuse at the hands of an IRA man, and a subsequent IRA “kangaroo court”.
Citing a strategy by Ms O’Neill’s office to tackle violence against women and girls (VAWG) Mr Gaston asked whether she would apologise for the 2018 comments. The FM said that she had already said she believed Ms Cahill, and that any woman affected needs “all the support they can get”.
Reacting to the comments, Máiría Cahill said: “Michelle O'Neill heads a strategy on VAWG yet her reluctance to apologise for her comments on my case made in a BBC interview some years previously runs contrary to a victim centred trauma led response. The First Minister traumatised me and my family with those comments… and she should of course apologise - not for my benefit, but for the victims of all paramilitary abusers”.
She said their voices “have effectively been silenced by people with similar attitudes - which hardly encourages a climate where they can come forward safe in the knowledge that the entirety of their experience will be believed no matter who the perpetrators are.
“That's vitally important in NI in particular - and it behoves a First Minister and Deputy leader of Sinn Féin to lead by example. Refusing to do so only makes a mockery of the entire executive strategy”.