Provisional Sinn Fein want their money.

international | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday August 02, 2005 21:04 by Sean O'Neill

PROVISIONAL Sinn Fein last night demanded that the year-long ban on its five MPs receiving the Queen’s shilling, worth up to an estimated £500,000 in English parliamentary allowances and expenses, be lifted in light of the PIRA's decision last week to surrender.

The former republican party is also looking to receive another windfall with the lifting of the suspension of a further annual £120,000 political development grant.
Following a vote by MPs, the allowances and expenses ban was implemented in April 2005 by Paul Murphy, the-then Northern Ireland secretary, after the Independent Monitoring Commission's (IMC) report into the £26.5m Northern Bank robbery in Belfast last December,which was attributed to the PIRA.
After the murder of Robert McCartney outside a bar in the city in January 2005, again attributed to members of the PIRA, Provisional Sinn Fein's political stock fell further at Westminster and in the Commons the British government succumbed to opposition calls for the party to be punished.
When the party had four British MPs, before May's British general election, including Gerry Adams MP and Martin McGuinness MP, it claimed more than £100,000-a-year each. With five MP’s, that bill would have been expected to top £500,000 this year.
Last night, a spokesman for Adams said: "We will be demanding our government recognises our democratic mandate in the same way it does with other parties."